In their first hearing of their impeachment inquiry into allegations of corruption involving President Biden and his family, House Republicans began laying out their evidence they say directly links the elder Mr. Biden to his son Hunter’s lucrative foreign business dealings while he served as vice president. Democrats, for their part, denounced the hearing as a partisan sideshow. 

“Since assuming our Republican majority in January, the House Oversight and Accountability Committee has uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” said the committee chairman, Congressman James Comer, in his opening statement.

“For years, President Biden has lied to the American people about his knowledge of and participation in his family’s corrupt business schemes,” Mr. Comer added. “At least ten times, Joe Biden lied to the American people that he never spoke to his family about their business dealings.”

Mr. Comer, who has been the GOP’s leading impeachment investigator, was joined on the dais by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, Congressman Jim Jordan, and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, Congressman Jason Smith.

Messrs. Jordan and Smith have also been overseeing wide-ranging investigations into the Biden family, the first son’s business dealings, and the Department of Justice during the course of its federal probe into the younger Mr. Biden. 

Congresswoman Nancy Mace forcefully denounced the Democrats for arguing that Republicans’ allegations are irrelevant. “This is complete and total hypocrisy,” she said. “My crack colleagues say none of this is relevant because Joe Biden wasn’t vice president while his family did these shady deals turns out that’s complete and total b*******.”

Ms. Mace called that “a lie,” saying “Hunter Biden referred to access to his father as the keys to his family’s only asset. Those words are going to come back and haunt Hunter Biden and his family forever.”

In his opening remarks, Mr. Smith detailed new documents his committee had released on Wednesday, which purportedly show that DOJ officials wanted to keep the president removed from the criminal investigation into his son. He pointed out that an assistant United States Attorney for Delaware, Lesley Wolf, said in an email to colleagues that “there should be nothing about Political Figure 1” in court documents meant to detail the first son’s alleged crimes. 

Mr. Smith said that “Political Figure 1” is the elder Mr. Biden. Ms. Wolf sent the email in August 2020 — three months before Mr. Biden was elected president. 

Mr. Smith also described a series of meetings Mr. Biden held with his son’s business partners while he was vice president. “Whether it was lunches, phone calls, White House meetings, or official foreign trips, Hunter Biden cashed in by arranging access to Joe Biden — the family brand,” Mr. Smith said. 

Congressman Byron Donalds read to Mr. Dubinsky a text message exchange taken from the younger Mr. Biden’s now notorious laptop between the first son and his younger half-sister, Ashley.

“This is the famous one that says,” Mr. Donalds read, “‘I hope you all do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years. It’s really hard but don’t worry, unlike pop I won’t make you … give me half your salary.’ 

“Mr. Dubinsky, if you saw a text message like this in a potential money laundering operation or a potential pay-for-play operation, would you be looking for information related to money going from sun to father?” Mr. Donalds asked.

“Absolutely, without a doubt,” Mr. Dubinsky, the forensic accountant, replied.

Democrats, for their part, portrayed the impeachment inquiry hearing as a fishing expedition meant to wage a public relations battle against the president, not a serious investigation into possible wrongdoing. 

The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Congressman Jamie Raskin, highlighted the looming government shutdown in his opening remarks, saying that Republicans are not serious about solving the nation’s most grave problems. 

“We are 62 hours away from shutting down the government of the United States of America and Republicans are launching an impeachment drive based on a long-debunked and discredited lie,” Mr. Raskin said.

The Maryland congressman said “this isn’t partisan warfare America is seeing today — it is chaotic infighting between Republicans and Republicans. It is MAGA versus extreme MAGA … what a staggering failure of leadership.”

Testifying before the committee were three witnesses called by the Republican majority — forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, law professor Jonathan Turley, and the former assistant United States attorney general for the tax division, Eileen O’Connor.

None of the three witnesses had direct knowledge about anything the Biden family may or may not have done abroad, but rather laid what House Republicans described as the groundwork for the inquiry by answering questions about financial crime, tax evasion, and the impeachment process itself. 

Mr. Turley said that while he does not support articles of impeachment being levied against the president, he does believe that “three inescapable facts” demand an impeachment inquiry be opened. 

“First, President Biden has indeed spoken falsely about these foreign deals,” the professor said. “Second, President Biden was the focus of a multi-million dollar influence peddling scheme. Finally, President Biden may have benefited from millions of dollars as a part of that scheme.”

Ms. O’Connor, who served as the DOJ’s top tax enforcer during the presidency of George W. Bush, said she was “invited to share my thoughts on the conduct of the tax investigation into Hunter Biden.” She said that Special Counsel David Weiss’s attempt to offer Mr. Biden a “sweetheart plea deal” was a “miscarriage of justice” that she could not ignore. 

For his part, Mr. Dubinsky said he “agreed to testify in this proceeding in order to help this committee and the American people gain a better understanding of how frauds are committed,” not to “grind” a political ax against the president or his son. 

Another law professor, Michael Gerhardt of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was brought before the committee by Democrats to detail why Mr. Biden should not be impeached. “The burden has flipped to President Biden to prove his innocence,” Mr. Gerhardt said. “A fishing expedition is not a legitimate purpose.”

Mr. Comer detailed new information from his committee taken from bank records showing that $260,000 was sent to the younger Mr. Biden from Communist China in the summer of 2019 when the elder Mr. Biden was seeking the Democratic nomination for president. The funds were sent to the presidents’s Wilmington, Delaware, residence, despite the fact that his son was not living with his father at the time, but was living with his new wife, Melissa Cohen, in Southern California. 

“It sure looks like Jonathan Li,” the Chinese national who sent money to the first son, “was making a substantial investment in the Bidens months after Joe Biden announced his run for the presidency in April 2019,” Mr. Comer said.

Democrats also contended that while they had little sympathy for the first son regarding his questionable foreign business dealings, Republicans have produced no evidence tying the president to Hunter’s nefarious business affairs. 

Congressman Maxwell Frost lambasted the Republican witnesses for, he argued, failing to provide any new information or insight. He echoed his colleagues’ accusations that the GOP was on a frivolous fishing expedition.

“We have one witness who has a lot of questions, Ms. O’Connor,” the congressman said. “Dubinsky, one witness who knows something about accounting but has no real involvement in what’s going on, and Mr. Turley is stopping here on his way to his next Fox News hit. This is not a serious inquiry.”

Before the hearing even concluded, Republicans expressed frustration that the witnesses they themselves had called were not more aggressively making the case that the president engaged in corruption or influenced government policy on behalf of his son. One Republican aide, who declined to speak for the record, tells the Sun that he was “happily not watching” the hearing. 

Another GOP aide told CNN that “You want witnesses that make your case. Picking witnesses that refute House Republicans arguments for impeachment is mind blowing. This is an unmitigated disaster.”