‘The most important witness’ and the House Oversight Committee’s last hope is here, but it’s been a huge waste of time

Well, the moment of truth has finally arrived, and I’ve got to say, it feels a lot like we’ve all been strung along for nothing. Former Biden chief of staff Jeff Zients showed up on Capitol Hill on Thursday for what’s being called the final interview in the House Oversight Committee’s probe into whether former President Joe Biden was mentally capable of making decisions. This entire investigation has been focused on whether Biden was even aware of the clemency orders and executive actions that were signed with an autopen during his last few months in office.

Zients is apparently the last former Biden official to be interviewed by the committee, per Fox News. The committee’s chairman, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., called him “one of the most, if not the most important, witnesses in our investigation,” which is a pretty bold statement. According to Comer, Zients was the one who “authorized the use of the autopen, especially down the stretch in the last lame duck period of the Biden administration”.

Comer’s claim is that many of the witnesses they’ve spoken to were “shielded from President Biden, especially in the last six months of his administration,” so Zients is supposedly the guy who was “making a lot of decisions down the stretch”. In other words, no one is saying what he wants. He hopes this last person, who is closest to Biden and has the most to lose, will say everything he wants them to say.

The probe on Biden is just another failure for the GOP

Now, to be fair, using an autopen isn’t new; it’s a common practice for presidents on both sides of the aisle. However, the committee’s concern isn’t about the tool itself, but whether Biden was actually the one making the call to use it. This all comes from GOP claims about his “mental and physical acuity” towards the end of his term.

It’s been reported that Zients was a key part of the chain of command for these pardons. A report from The New York Times said he was among the top aides who would relay Biden’s clemency decisions to assistants, who would then draft the orders. These drafts were then circulated back to senior officials before getting final approval. Meanwhile, Biden himself has claimed he made every clemency decision on his own.

Adding to the drama, Zients signed off on pardons for five of Biden’s family members less than 24 hours before he left office. However, Biden’s allies have really pushed back on this whole thing, calling the investigation politically motivated. The whole situation feels like it’s been building up to this one final interview, with Comer claiming that Zients’ testimony is the last hope for this investigation to actually find something.

As Comer wrote in a letter to Zients back in June, “The scope of your responsibilities—both official and otherwise—and personal interactions within the Oval Office cannot go without investigation”. He even suggested that if staff were hiding the President’s condition, Congress might need a legislative response.

But let’s be real, this whole thing feels like a huge waste of time. The news is that Zients showed up, shook Comer’s hand, and then said absolutely nothing to reporters. It’s the final act, the grand finale of a long, drawn-out investigation, and it’s just a lot of talk and no new information. Now Comer has to explain why he wasted everyone’s time and taxpayer money on this.