Dems gearing up shadow group ‘war rooms’ to defend Biden from GOP oversight, accountability

As Republicans gear up to investigate the wrongdoings of President Joe Biden’s administration, Democratic allies aren’t being shy about their use of dark money networks to manipulate narratives to their benefit.

Even the slightest majority is sufficient for Republicans to take the reins of committees from progressives who’ve been running defense for Biden and blocking answers to meaningful questions about policy failures. As previously reported, House Judiciary Committee Republicans have already set their sights on 42 officials for testimony and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is looking into similar investigations on COVID origins, Hunter Biden’s laptop, and the botched Afghanistan withdrawal.

Such actions have left Democrats bracing for the worst with the creation of “war rooms” to counter investigative findings that have left some worried about Biden’s chances for reelection, NBC News reported. The outlet made no effort to sugarcoat the surreptitious behavior as they wrote, “Three new ‘war rooms’ have sprung up in the past two weeks to combat the House Republicans’ investigations, each backed by multimillion-dollar dark money budgets and some of the best-known operatives in the Democratic Party.”

“It’s clear the White House has been preparing for the anticipated barrage of meritless investigations from House Republicans, and outside groups are an essential component,” Adrienne Elrod said. She helped defend former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ahead of her 2016 presidential campaign from congressional probes with the organization Correct the Record. “It’s important that the opposition not get the upper hand in defining a false narrative, and outside groups can help mitigate that from happening.”

Correct the Record founder David Brock has left Media Matters to start one of these war rooms dubbed Facts First USA. “I do believe that, absent a vigorous operation, like the one we’re putting out, I think it makes it difficult for President Biden to be reelected.”

Compared to the other “war rooms,” Congressional Integrity Project and Courage for America, Facts First is not formally tied to the White House in the supposed campaign to defend against “the Republicans that are really making this a political issue. We are doing this in response.”

Reacting to Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) efforts through the Judiciary Committee, Kyle Herrig who founded the Congressional Integrity Project claimed, “These are sham investigations. You can take Jordan’s word at it. They don’t have an agenda that will help Americans. They have only one agenda and it’s a political agenda.”

“We’re going to leave no stone unturned,” he went on as his group intends to launch attacks against Republicans. “No one had done the investigative research we’ve done on these investigators. People in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. We have a multimillion-dollar budget, and we’re staffing up with a team of researchers and communicators.”

Meanwhile, Courage for America has the backing of a the dark money network Hub Project and at least a seven-figure budget being used for a “robust operation including polling, paid advertising and social media campaigns, along with traditional opposition research and communications.”

In other words, propaganda.

Eric Schultz, a White House spokesperson for former President Barack Obama outlined the reason for outsourcing these actions when he said, “There are a lot of constraints on the administration when responding to oversight investigations–even ones that are completely bogus–but none of which apply to outside groups.”

Remaining independent, Brock’s Facts First was highlighted by NBC News as specifically linked to Hunter Biden with the founder even traveling to Los Angeles to personally meet with the president’s son.

“I came out of that not nervous. I came out of that thinking that we’ll be able to show, over time, this is a Republican fantasy narrative driven by a lot of unreliable witnesses and spurious conspiracy theories. To me, the main story here is of an addictive person who has mental health issues of the kind that are in most families in America,” he explained before adding, “I also think it’s the story of Joe Biden as an empathetic father.”

Kevin Haggerty

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