House Republicans are still looking for evidence that the President committed an impeachable offence in connection with his family’s foreign business dealings, but the House Oversight Committee announced Wednesday that it had subpoenaed Hunter and James Biden, the President’s son and brother, respectively.
The Republican-led panel also claimed that it had subpoenaed Rob Walker, a business associate of the Biden family, and asked for voluntary interviews with a number of people, including James Biden’s wife Sara, Hallie Biden, the president’s eldest son’s widow, Hunter Biden’s ex-boyfriend Beau Biden, and Tony Bobulinski, another business associate of the president’s son.
House Republicans are focusing on a list of high-profile interviews they want to perform before winding up their impeachment inquiry into the president, and Wednesday’s subpoenas mark the first time the panel has explicitly subpoenaed members of the Biden family.
While their ultimate goal is becoming clearer, how long this process will take is less certain, as is whether the senior House Republicans will be able to convince enough of their GOP colleagues that Biden committed any serious crimes or misdemeanours.
The White House, which has consistently rejected Comer’s investigation, recently produced a document criticising the panel’s decision to subpoena members of the Biden family, portraying it as Comer giving in to the demands of conservative Republicans.
‘The most extreme voices in their party, like James Comer, are trying to divert from their repeated failures to govern,’ White House spokesman Ian Sams stated. “With little over a week to go until House Republicans may again drive the country into a destructive and chaotic government shutdown, the most extreme voices in their party are trying to distract from that.
‘Extreme House Republicans should perform their jobs,’ he went on, urging his party to stop using its influence to “pursue a partisan political smear campaign against the President and his family.”
For months, Republicans have been poring over Hunter Biden’s financial records and international business connections, and as a consequence of their subpoenas to banks, they have obtained hundreds of bank wires and papers. They claim that the Bidens have received over $24 million from foreign nationals over the past five years. These funds have come from places including China, Russia, Ukraine, Romania, and Kazakhstan.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, said in a statement that the committee would “bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence.”
In recent weeks, Republican members of the House Oversight Committee published two personal checks written by James and Sara Biden to Joe Biden with the words “loan repayment” printed on the front. These transactions took place while Biden was not in office.
To the FBI in 2020, Walker claimed, “I certainly never was thinking at any time that ah.., the V. P. was a part of anything we were doin’.” Walker had received funds from countries including China and Romania and sent amounts to members of the Biden family.