In a dramatic turn of events, Hunter Biden made a surprise appearance Wednesday morning at a House Oversight Committee hearing where Republicans were preparing to move a resolution holding him in criminal contempt of Congress. 

As members of the committee prepared to sit for their meeting, Mr. Biden walked into the committee room flanked by his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, and his friend and art benefactor, Kevin Morris, and sat down in the audience. 

The appearance made a spectacle of the committee hearing, as the GOP was preparing to hold Mr. Biden in contempt for refusing to give a closed-door deposition to committee lawyers. 

Democrats quickly pushed to have Mr. Biden testify on the spot. Ever since he was subpoenaed in November, Mr. Biden had said he was willing to testify publicly before the committee, but not behind closed doors. 

“Who wants to hear from Hunter?” asked Congressman Jared Moskowitz, a Democrat. Every Democratic member of the committee raised their hands. Republicans, however, held to their insistence that Mr. Biden must first appear for a deposition before his public hearing. 

As Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene began to speak about the necessity of having Mr. Biden appear in private, the first son, along with Messrs. Lowell and Morris and his secret service detail, left the committee room. 

Ms. Greene may be a sore spot for the president’s son. At a previous Oversight Committee hearing in July, she displayed obscene photos of Mr. Biden in the company of women believed to be escorts and accused him of sex trafficking. Mr. Lowell then filed a formal ethics complaint against Ms. Greene.

“Hunter Biden was and is a private citizen, but despite this, Republicans have tried to use him as a surrogate to attack his father,” Mr. Lowell said, reading prepared remarks just outside of the committee room as Hunter stood beside him. 

Mr. Lowell described the deposition process as “a tactic that Republicans have repeatedly misused to selectively leak and mischaracterize what witnesses have said.”

Reporters peppered Team Hunter with questions. The only question Mr. Biden himself answered was about how he would put his father on speakerphone at more than 20 meetings with business partners. “If he called, wouldn’t you answer?” he asked rhetorically. 

Mr. Morris has also come under scrutiny during the House impeachment inquiry, and the Oversight Committee formally asked him in November to give them a “transcribed interview.”

The Hollywood lawyer, who made a fortune off legal work he did for the creators of the ribald Comedy Central show “South Park,” has developed a deep friendship with Mr. Biden in recent years and reportedly plays a key role in the first son’s aggressive legal and public relations strategy. He helped pay off the first son’s substantial tax debts and purchased more than $800,000 worth of his artwork. 

The White House has reportedly been frustrated by Mr. Biden’s aggressive public relations strategy, according to Politico, which reported that White House aides have been unable to get the President to bring his son to heel. 

At a previous press event on December 13 — the day he was due to give his deposition — Mr. Biden appeared on Capitol Hill to say he would not cooperate with a deposition request because the committee chairman, Congressman James Comer, would leak selective details to the media. 

Weeks earlier, Mr. Biden told the techno artist and liberal podcaster Moby, whom he’d befriended during addiction treatment, that Republicans were seeking to “kill” him, by causing him to relapse, in order to put pressure on his father that was greater than the elder Biden could bear.