WASHINGTON — Just hours before Rep. James Comer, R-Tompkinsville, led a chaotic hearing Thursday night, his campaign sent an email “From the Desk of Oversight Chairman James Comer.”
The oversight committee was deciding whether to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the audio of President Joe Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur.
In the email, which asks for donations, Comer wrote in part, “Biden and his advisors are terrified that I will release the recordings…” and “The Democrats are pulling out all the stops to stop the bleeding, and that means coming after me with everything they have.”
Democrats questioned the ethics of the email in committee.
“There is an ethics principle that no solicitation of a campaign or political contribution may be linked to an action taken or to be taken by a member or employee in his or her official capacity,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md.
Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said he would like to ask the parliamentarian if Comer's "conduct here in raising money in connection with this hearing is referrable to the ethics committee within this hearing.”
Stephen Voss, a specialist in Kentucky politics at the University of Kentucky, said politicians used to have a sharper divide between electioneering and governing.
“Because politicians these days are permanently campaigning, it creates more opportunities for them to run afoul of the division between the things they do as leaders, as part of the government, versus the things they do as candidates,” Voss said. “Who gets to decide when even the most minimal use of a technology constitutes campaigning and is therefore an ethics violation that gets censure, that's the sort of nitty gritty on ethics details that I think most of us don't know, and most of us wouldn't want to know.”
The committee voted along party lines to hold Garland in contempt, but the referral has to be approved by the full House.
Spectrum News reached out to Comer’s campaign for comment.
Comer does not have a Republican opponent in next week’s primary election, but he is running against Democrat Erin Marshall in November.