Democrat Jared Moskowitz ratchets up his trolling of GOP impeachment probe

Democratic lawmaker Jared Moskowitz is increasingly working to turn the GOP’s impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden into a spectacle as the evidence gathered by his committee appears to still lack the votes to pass even the hardline Republican-held House of Representatives.

Mr Moskowitz was spotted on Capitol Hill on Wednesday wearing a mask bearing the likeness of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, an apparent reference to the testimony of Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas wherein Mr Parnas claimed that the allegations against the Biden family were a Russian propaganda op.

It was the second headline-catching move of the day by the Democrat from Florida, who has emerged as a persistent thorn in the side of Republicans on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on which he serves. Mr Moskowitz has repeatedly gotten in angry back-and-forth arguments with Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, who has resorted to childishly insulting his colleague’s appearance as Mr Moskowitz has berated Republicans for pursuing what he has derided as a sham inquiry.

This week, another one of those public displays of tensions on the panel took place at Wednesday’s hearing when Mr Moskowitz dared Republicans to pass a motion to advance the impeachment inquiry to the full House of Representatives, and called the motion himself. Republicans on the panel refrained from supporting it, leading Mr Moskowitz to accuse them of pursuing the probe with no end in sight or target in mind.

“Let’s just do the impeachment,” he said during the committee’s hearing on Wednesday. “Why continue to waste millions of dollars of the taxpayers’ money if we’re going to impeach because you believe you’ve shown he’s committed a high crime or misdemeanour?