When the House Republicans began an investigation into the criminality of President Joe Biden, I wondered what criminal behavior they could possibly reveal that was not already known? I truly wondered if the President could be hiding some dangerous behavior.

Two years later, the sound and fury of the investigation continues, yet the Judiciary Committee has uncovered nothing but unfounded accusations and generated some negative press for the President.  I finally realized that the point was not to uncover evidence, but to create the illusion that evidence was forthcoming and to make something stick to the reputation of the President, whether it was true or not. Heather Cox Richardson calls it a “smear” campaign. I would call it a campaign to distract from the bad behavior of the President before Biden or the “Something Rotten” Conspiracy Principle.

President Trump was impeached twice without a conviction. If the Judiciary Committee could threaten to impeach Biden even once, the score would be even, in the minds of Jim Jordan and his gang of eighteen Republicans. Their plan was to churn out innuendoes that something was rotten in the Oval Office, and they  were going to get to the bottom of it. They tried the same strategy with Alejandro Majorkas, Secretary of Homeland Security, and the House refused to impeach him this week, with four Republicans refusing to buy the product.

So it is not so much a smear campaign, but a campaign of “Whataboutism” i.e. the trick of turning any argument against the opponent.  When faced with accusations of corruption, they claim the entire world is corrupt.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism . That’s why it was necessary to campaign against two Democratic officials together– to balance the scales against the considerable corruption of a man with two impeachments on his record.

The former President made the template for “something rotten,” when he pursued the charges of election fraud in 2020 through 62 lawsuits with only one discovering even a minor infraction. Still he pursued his claims just to maintain that uncertainty about fair elections in the voters’ minds. Apparently it worked, because one-third of Americans continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen. These beliefs are based on innuendo and unproven accusations.

Republicans renewed Trump’s “something rotten” strategy with the impeachment campaigns against Biden and Majorkas without uncovering any substantial evidence. By merely investigating they have kept suspicion alive that something sinister (“rotten”) must be happening in Washington,D.C.  Certain citizens love “something rotten” theories,” and investigations add odor to something rotten when it is past its expiration date.

I have to concede that attributing sinister motives to the House Judiciary Committee is a conspiracy theory of my own. And maybe, as House Speaker Mike Johnson claims, the President truly believes the election was stolen from him.  I can only point to the facts of no substantial evidence in any of these cases and the persistence of the former President and the Republican cohorts of the Judiciary Committee to believe what they cannot prove. This dogged pursuit of mere suspicion suggests a mentality favoring suspicion over facts. Suspicions are what keep voting citizens off balance, even turning suspicions into personal convictions.

Americans need to remember the principle that a defendant is innocent until proven guilty, even during House investigations.

Certainly the former President remembers it. It has kept him alive through 91 indictments, which rely on more than suspicion to stay fresh in the legal system.

*See Hamlet, Act I, Scene iv: “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark” [a suspicion, not yet a fact]