‘We Absolutely Do NOT Know That!’ CNN Fact-Checker Daniel Dale Torpedoes Biden Impeachment Hearing

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale knocked down a raft of claims made at the first impeachment inquiry hearing against President Joe Biden, including one Republican who insisted “we already know” something we don’t.

On Thursday, the GOP-led House Oversight and Accountability Committee held the first hearing of a much-derided impeachment inquiry into President Biden. It didn’t go well.

Dale was a guest on Thursday night’s edition of CNN Primetime, during which anchor Abby Phillip asked him to test some of the claims made during the hearing by Republicans — including a whopper from Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) and a piece of “fabricated” evidence from Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL):

PHILLIP: Republicans presenting no evidence of wrongdoing by Biden, but lobbing a series of false allegations instead.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. NANCY MACE (R-SC): We already know the president took bribes from Burisma.

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PHILLIP: Daniel Dale is, of course, here to fact check all of this. Let’s start right there where you just heard Nancy Mace. She says, President Biden, she said definitively, we know President Biden has taken bribes from Burisma. What’s the truth?

DANIEL DALE: She said, “we know.” We absolutely do not know this! This is a completely uncorroborated allegation. All we know is that there is an internal FBI document from 2020 that says that year, an informant, someone they had deemed highly credible had told them that four years prior, the CEO of this Ukrainian company, Burisma, had claimed that he had given five million to one Biden, five million to another. But that document contained no corroboration. In fact, the document said even this informant could not even offer an opinion on the veracity of the claim. It’s now three years later. We still have no proof of it.

And I’ll note, Abby, that in this same hearing, a witness called by Republicans, law professor Jonathan Turley, cautioned that this is, he said, a secondhand account. He said, you can only take an allegation like this so far.

PHILLIP: And he also said he doesn’t support — he doesn’t think the evidence that they have supports an actual impeachment. So the other thing is that House Republicans set this hearing up and said that they would have the receipts. Here’s what Chairman Comer said in his opening remarks today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JAMES COMER (R-KY): Just this week, we uncovered two additional wires sent to Hunter Biden that originated in Beijing from Chinese nationals. This happened when Joe Biden was running for president of the United States, and Joe Biden’s home is listed as the beneficiary address.

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PHILLIP: Seems to me there’s some things missing here.

DALE: There are some very important things missing. So these wire transfers did happen in 2019. What Chairman Comer, though, did not mention was that there is a quite plausible and quite benign possible explanation for why President Biden’s Wilmington, Delaware home was listed as the so-called beneficiary address.

And that is that Hunter Biden, his son, had lived at that house. He listed that address on his driver’s license. We know this. And his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, told CNN in a statement that the reason his address was listed because he had opened a bank account with that same address. And the lawyer said that’s because it was his only permanent address at the time.

So the fact that the address was there is not evidence whatsoever that Joe Biden got that money. And in fact, they’re pretty, pretty obvious explanations for why it might have been.

PHILLIP: There was some more purported evidence that was presented in a hearing, but it was actually Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who actually accused Republicans of fabricating parts of it or at least omitting key parts of that evidence.

DALE: Yeah, it was kind of like a Democratic attempt at a fact check. So why don’t we listen to this exchange? It was Florida Republican Congressman Byron Donalds made a claim and then Congresswoman Ocasio- Cortez responded to it later. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. BYRON DONALDS (R-FL): This is about four months before Joe Biden launched his campaign for president of the United States, December 2018. The highlight is this is a text message between Jim Biden and Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden wasn’t a bad way, by the way. He was — he was really strung out. If you saw a text message like this between the president’s brother and the president’s son, wouldn’t you be concerned about them trying to give plausible deniability for the president of the United States to not have any knowledge of said business dealings.

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): What was brought out from that fabricated image excluded critical context that changed the underlying meaning and allegation that was presented up on that screen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DALE: So the Congresswoman, Abby, is right. Congressman Donalds did leave out critical context. So what were they talking about? Well, this week, yesterday, House Republicans released this text exchange between Hunter Biden and his uncle, James Biden. And the actual context shows that Hunter Biden was saying, he’s run out of money, and he can’t pay his kids’ school tuition. He can’t pay for gas and food. He can’t pay alimony without help from his father.

And then James Biden responds that it’s kind of vague language that basically they can work on this, that he can work with his father alone, he can be a safe harbor. So anyway, the context of this is Hunter Biden saying he doesn’t have money for personal expenses. His uncle saying, yeah, I can help work with your dad on that. There was no indication anywhere in that exchange that was released by House Republicans that this was about business dealings, let alone the foreign business dealings that House Republicans have been focused on.

But Congressman Donalds did not release the Hunter Biden text message that preceded his uncle’s response. And so he didn’t allow people to understand that this was about alimony, personal expenses, rather than foreign business dealings.

PHILLIP: Daniel Dale, thank you. We’ll see if there are more of these hearings, but either way, you’ll be pretty busy.

Watch above via CNN Primetime.