House GOP finds new star witnesses: Democrats challenging their own party’s narratives

House Republicans have found themselves two key Democrat witnesses who have turned the tables and challenged the narratives of President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

"Whistleblower X" publicly revealed his identity at a House Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday about the Hunter Biden investigation as Joseph Ziegler, a 13-year special agent in the Criminal Investigation Division.

Ziegler described himself as a "gay Democrat married to a man" and said that Hunter Biden "should have been charged with a tax felony, and not only the tax misdemeanor charge."

Ziegler also challenged another narrative from Joe Biden, clearly disputing the president’s widely publicized claim in 2020 that his family never received money from China.

“Mr. Ziegler is it true that the President’s family received money originating from China which was funneled through the Robinson Walker account?” Rep. Russel Fry asked at one point.

“That is correct,” the agent answered.  

Ziegler’s supervisor Gary Shapley also testified at the hearing, which Republicans hoped would convince Americans that the Bidens have not told the truth about their foreign business dealings and were protected by political interference in the investigation.

"You have two key witnesses who were part of the investigative team who can talk about text messages, WhatsApp messages, the things that they attempted to do, and were thwarted like doing interviews with Joe Biden's family, grandchildren, doing search warrants and doing all these things that they weren't allowed to do because people in Washington's DOJ was shutting them down and thwarting their investigations," said GOP Rep. Greg Steube on the Just the News, No Noise TV program.

Republicans have a new Democrat on tap to be the star witness on Thursday.

2024 presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a Democrat hoping to unseat Joe Biden, is testifying before the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government hearing that will "examine the federal government's role in censoring Americans, the Missouri v. Biden case, and Big Tech's collusion with out-of-control government agencies to silence speech."

Kennedy, an outspoken critic of the federal government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, has described himself as "the first person censored by the Biden administration."

Reacting to Kennedy's planned testimony, Steube said the First Amendment is the most important freedom Americans have and without it, the U.S. would not have democracy.

"I think it's fascinating that we have a Democrat, who is running for president and against Joe Biden in the primary, coming to testify about how Joe Biden's administration, three days into when they took office, were censoring Mr. Kennedy and his opposition to the vaccine and the mandates and all these different things," Steube, a member of the subcommittee, said on the Just the News, No Noise TV program. "The Biden administration was corroborating with Twitter and Facebook and social media platforms about censoring not just him, but other Americans that they didn't agree with on political speech."

Steube also said that the Democratic members of the weaponization select subcommittee "are going to attack him [Kennedy] just like they attack all of our other witnesses, which I think is going to show the American people exactly who they are."

About 100 Democrats wrote to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy earlier this week in an effort to get Kennedy's testimony cancelled over controversial comments he made about COVID-19 and Jewish people.

"COVID-19 is targeted to attack Caucasians and Black people. The people who are most immune are Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese," Kennedy said in a video that was published by The Washington Post.

McCarthy emphasized that he disagreed with "everything" Kennedy had said in the video but that cancelling his testimony would be a form of censorship. 

“The hearing that we have this week is about censorship. I don’t think censoring somebody is actually the answer here," McCarthy told reporters. “I think if you’re going to look at censorship in America — your first action is to censor him probably plays into some of the problems we have."