In a new book, James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chair of the powerful US House oversight committee, claims that in a private conversation the Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward told him “everyone in DC knew” Joe Biden was financially corrupt.
“Woodward explained that everyone in DC knew that Joe allowed his family to sell access to him, but as far as he was aware, that was not illegal,” Comer writes. “He added that it should be, but it wasn’t. ‘You will have to prove all of Joe Biden’s wrongdoing,’ he said, ‘and you will likely not be able to do that.’”
Comer’s investigation of the Bidens might end up “bigger than Watergate”, Woodward reportedly added, though he also cautioned it could be “a big nothing burger” too.
Now 81, Woodward is the author of numerous bestsellers about presidents and politics. The legendary journalist is famously well-connected and tight-lipped about the interviews and sourcing that produce his scoop-laden books. His career has been built on a scrupulously nonpartisan approach to reporting on presidents and their high-powered peers, and Comer’s recounting of an off-the-record conversation with Woodward presents a potentially rare glimpse into his work.
Woodward did not respond to a request for comment about Comer’s claims about his remarks about Biden.
In the last Congress, Comer mounted investigations of the president, his surviving son, Hunter Biden, and other family members, seeking to prove longstanding rightwing claims of financial impropriety linked to foreign governments which the Bidens fiercely deny and which Republicans often mix with wild conspiracy theories.
Unable to prove wrongdoing, Comer’s work fizzled publicly, not least when a key Republican witness, the law professor Jonathan Turley, told a much-hyped hearing evidence against Joe Biden did not meet the threshold for impeachment and removal.
Nonetheless, allegations of corruption involving the Bidens remain controversial. Hunter Biden was eventually convicted on criminal charges relating to taxation and guns. Last month, to widespread uproar, his father gave him a pardon.
Biden will soon cede the White House to Donald Trump but Comer will hope to keep controversy bubbling with his book, in which he repeats a torrent of unsubstantiated claims and conspiracy theories and skirts over embarrassing missteps. All the President’s Money: Investigating the Secret Foreign Schemes That Made the Biden Family Rich, will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.
Indicating Woodward’s stature in Washington, Comer’s title is a tribute to All the President’s Men, the book Woodward wrote with his reporting partner, Carl Bernstein, recounting their work to expose the Watergate scandal that brought down Richard Nixon in 1974 and which became a hit film starring Robert Redford as Woodward and Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein.
In his own book, Comer writes that in early February 2023, he “managed to have dinner with Bob Woodward”, who “had credibility in a town full of journalists with absolutely zero credibility”.
Comer says Bob Costa of CBS also attended the “quiet homemade dinner prepared by Woodward’s wife”, because the two reporters were “doing a book on Joe Biden’s presidency and wanted to interview me because they thought my investigation might have an impact”.
Costa co-wrote Peril, Woodward’s third book on Trump’s presidency, published in September 2021.
Comer says he gave Woodward and Costa their interview, “then asked Woodward what he thought about my investigation. He replied that he thought Biden had obviously worked the system his entire political career, and that his son and both brothers had a troubled financial history. He predicted that my investigation ‘would either be bigger than Watergate or it would end up being a big nothing burger’.
“The receipts had to show the money flowed all the way to the top.”
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Comer says Woodward then made his claim “that everyone in DC knew that Joe allowed his family to sell access to him”.
Comer says he told Woodward and Costa he planned to subpoena “all of the Biden characters’ bank accounts”, only for Woodward to tell him Biden’s lawyers would never allow it. “Costas [sic] piped in,” Comer adds, “and said that everyone knew Joe Biden had always been cash-strapped and always tried to live beyond his means”, but the whole family was “very good ‘at covering its tracks’”.
Describing the supposedly private conversation, Comer also claims Woodward boasted about Watergate (“He proudly declared that he solved the Watergate crime, not the senators. They just copied and pasted his work”) and disparaged “today’s reporters” for having no sources “outside of politicians and political operatives”.
Comer’s disdain for the press is evident throughout his book. So is vituperative abuse of fellow members of Congress. Fellow Republicans do not escape his wrath but he saves particular venom for a senior Democrat, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who as the ranking member of the House oversight committee worked closely with Comer, the two men often presenting at least an appearance of good humor before the press.
A professor of constitutional law, Raskin was a member of the House January 6 committee and lead manager in Trump’s second Senate impeachment trial, over the Capitol attack. Widely respected, the author of his own bestselling book, he is now the ranking Democrat on the judiciary committee.
As described in print by Comer, Raskin has a “warped partisan mind”; is “arrogant, usually dishonest”; is a “goon” and a “hoodlum”; talks to the press “with his trademark chest bowed out and head cocked back (much like what we of the Appalachian foothills call a banty rooster)”; and was guilty of telling “bald-faced lies” about an FBI document detailing a claim of wrongdoing at issue during Comer’s Biden investigations.
A spokesperson for Raskin did not respond to a request for comment.
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