House GOP Will Subpoena President Biden and His Family Members as Part of Hunter Biden Probe, Comer Says
‘We know that this is going to end up in court when we subpoena the Bidens,’ the House Oversight Committee chairman says. ‘So we’re putting together a case, and I think we’ve done that very well.’
Congressman James Comer says the House Oversight Committee, which he chairs, will subpoena members of the Biden family in the coming months as part of its investigation into allegations of corruption involving Hunter Biden and his father. This comes as Speaker McCarthy again said that the matter could soon rise to the level of an impeachment inquiry.
“This is always going to end with the Bidens coming in front of the committee,” Mr. Comer told Fox Business’s Maria Bartiromo on Thursday. “We are going to subpoena the family.”
The Oversight Committee chairman also said he is prepared for a court battle with the president’s legal team if and when it seeks to oppose the subpoenas. “We know that this is going to end up in court when we subpoena the Bidens. So we’re putting together a case, and I think we’ve done that very well. We’ve shown the bank records,” he said.
Biden family members who could be subpoenaed would almost certainly include Hunter Biden, whose business affairs have been the focus of much of the investigation. Also likely to be subpoenaed would be the president’s brother, James, who has long been involved in various business efforts with his nephew.
The subpoenas also could focus on other Biden family members who are believed to have received disbursements of the money paid to Hunter Biden by foreign entities in China, Ukraine and elsewhere. One of these family members is Hallie Biden, the widow of President Biden’s son Beau who would later have a short-lived and tempestuous romance with Hunter. She is believed to have received about $30,000 as a result of Hunter’s overseas business ventures.
She is also the family member who, according to Politico, threw Hunter Biden’s Colt handgun into a trash can outside a Delaware grocery store, leading to the first son being charged with firearms offenses that are currently the subject of his controversial plea deal.
Mr. Comer said he knew that he had to find evidence of alleged financial misdeeds by the Biden family before he issued any subpoenas, but after months of intensive research, he says he’s now ready. “If I had subpoenaed Joe and Hunter Biden the first day I became chairman of the committee, it would have been tied up in court and the judge would have eventually thrown it out. … We have put together a case that I think would stand up in any court of law in America.”
Mr. Comer’s comments come just one day after his committee released the third round of bank records showing foreign money moving to the first son. In total, the Oversight Committee has found more than $20 million that was transferred to Hunter Biden from overseas.
“We found more bank records that show the Bidens continue to rake in millions of dollars from our adversaries around the world, much of it while Joe Biden was vice president,” Mr. Comer said of the new bank records on Thursday. “Just a few months ago, the president and the media were telling us that … no money ever transferred to the Bidens while Joe Biden was vice president. That was false. He said that his family never received money from China. That was false.”
Mr. Comer’s investigation into the Biden family began shortly after the Republicans took control of the House in January. Within weeks, the Oversight Committee had released an extensive memo detailing overseas partnerships into which the younger Mr. Biden entered during his father’s time as vice president.
Calls for impeachment from the GOP side have intensified in recent weeks following the testimony from three key witnesses who had a comprehensive understanding of the first son’s tax issues and business practices. In July, Mr. McCarthy said the Oversight Committee’s investigation was “rising to the level of an impeachment inquiry.”
In a sign of how likely a possible impeachment is, one of the most moderate members of the House Republican conference, Congressman Don Bacon, told CNN he would be open to making such a move. “It seems apparent that President Biden wasn’t being honest when he denied any involvement in his son’s business dealings,” Mr. Bacon said on Monday. “Further, it’s apparent tens of millions of dollars were involved that prospered the family.”
First, two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, testified before the Oversight Committee, detailing the alleged “preferential treatment” the younger Mr. Biden received while he was under investigation for tax evasion and an illegal gun purchase by the United States attorney for Delaware, David Weiss.
Messrs. Shapley and Ziegler claimed that officials at the Department of Justice improperly interfered with the investigation, including denying Mr. Weiss special counsel status and declining to bring charges where he had made recommendations.
Mr. Ziegler also detailed alleged tax write-offs Mr. Biden took while dealing with his drug and alcohol addiction. He alleged that Mr. Biden avoided paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal taxes by writing off a vacation to France where he “learned how to cook crack,” college tuition payments for his daughters, and payments to prostitutes and to exclusive sex clubs with membership fees. Taking these write-offs, the whistleblowers testified, was criminal behavior that should have justified significant prison sentences.
Republicans have also used the testimony of Mr. Biden’s former close friend and business associate, Devon Archer, to advance their calls for an impeachment inquiry. Although the president has long said he “knew nothing” about his son’s business dealings, Archer testified behind closed doors to members of the Oversight Committee that the elder Mr. Biden often called into dinners where his son was meeting with potential partners.
Although Archer testified that he never heard his friend discuss business with his father, he did confirm that while Mr. Biden was vice president, he twice had dinner with his son’s foreign business associates and that it was “categorically false” that the president was unaware of his son’s business affairs.