Representative Fry Expresses to Newsmax: Democrats Aim to ‘Divert Attention’ during Initial Impeachment Hearing

Rep. Russell Fry, R-S.C., told Newsmax on Thursday that the goal of Democrat House members at the first impeachment inquiry hearing of President Joe Biden was to “distract” from the proceedings.

“I think you saw that today,” Fry said during an appearance on Newsmax’s “The Record with Greta Van Susteren.” “In the hearing, Democrats were engaged in a very aggressive campaign to delay, to distract. They talked about President [Donald] Trump, they talked about that there was no vote on the House floor, which is not required, they talked about the countdown to the government shutting down.

“So, they talk about everything else but the facts, and I kind of equated it in my testimony that they’re trying to throw up these affirmative defenses as a distraction, as if it means anything,” he said.

“But we’re examining the evidence. What we’ve laid out today was what we currently have and the impeachment mechanisms themselves — how this works in our constitutional republic. Democrats were not interested in engaging in that discourse whatsoever.”

Fry said that, while he’s not sure when the next hearing on impeachment is set, “What came out of that today was setting the stage for what the mechanics of impeachment look like.” The South Carolina Republican stressed that the House GOP is “doing it the right way, unlike how they have previously been done.”

“Yesterday, they just dropped 700 pages from the House Ways and Means Committee of really bombshell information,” he said. “We’re still going through it. But it continues to kind of highlight the problems with this president, with the family, connecting Hunter Biden and his business associates, his business transactions, with his father, and you saw that on full display at today’s hearing.”

When asked why they were just receiving the documents from the Ways and Means Committee now, Fry said they were “part of the IRS whistleblowers, so they were protected.”

“The House Ways and Means Committee had to vote to release those documents,” he said. “They have to go through all these formal procedures. So, the whistleblowers, Mr. [Gary] Shapley and Mr. [Joseph] Ziegler, were allowed to testify, but there were certain things that they were not allowed to do because there was no vote to release that. That vote, of course, happened and those documents have now been released to the American public.”

Commenting on House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer’s decision to subpoena first son Hunter Biden’s bank records, along with the bank records of James Biden, the president’s brother, Fry said, “I think we follow the facts where they go.

“From the very beginning, this has been kind of a trail of bread crumbs that have led us to where we are,” he said. “It started with business bank records, associates of the Biden family, and I think the picture is becoming incredibly clear. … Today was a good day for our first impeachment hearing.”

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