Hunter Biden and his uncle James Biden were subpoenaed Wednesday by the House Oversight Committee, which took the notable step of seeking depositions from members of President Biden’s family as part of its impeachment inquiry .
As part of this request, the committee requested that James Biden’s wife, Sarah Biden, as well as Hunter Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen, sit for transcribed interviews. The panel also requests interviews with Hallie Biden, Beau Biden’s widow, and his sister Elizabeth Secundy.
The subpoenas come weeks after the Oversight Committee demanded the personal bank records of Hunter and James Biden, and also include a subpoena for Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Rob Walker.
Panel also asks to speak to Tony Bobulinski, whom Hunter Biden’s lawyer requested accused of lying to the FBI.
The statement from House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said he “plans to send additional subpoenas and transcribed interview requests later this week.”
On the front page of The Hill
The decision to compel their testimony comes a day after special counsel David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware who is investigating Hunter Biden, sat down for a voluntary interview with lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee, another panel of the trio leading the investigation.
The subpoenas are the first major action since the election of Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who supported efforts to impeach President Biden although he speaks of the need to use Congress’s power sparingly.
The White House highlighted the challenge of Johnson’s election and the looming government shutdown, calling the subpoenas a “smear campaign” against the president.
“With just over a week before House Republicans can once again plunge the country into a dangerous and chaotic government shutdown, their party’s most extremist voices, like James Comer, are trying to hijack the “attention to their repeated failures to govern,” said Ian Sams, Speaker of the House of Representatives. The White House surveillance spokesperson said in a memo.
“Despite spending millions of taxpayer dollars to conduct this investigation, they have found no evidence to support their wild allegations of corruption and “high crimes,” which they say motivate their “investigation.” impeachment” open.
And Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) noted that Republicans already had important information on many of the numbers they contacted Wednesday.
“The Committee has already obtained the personal financial records of three private citizens subpoenaed by President Comer: the President’s brother, his son, and one of their business partners, Rob Walker. The Committee also has Mr. Walker’s interview with the FBI and the summary of his interview with the IRS, which Republicans have already released,” he said in a statement.
“These subpoenas and interview requests are further proof that this bogus impeachment inquiry is driven solely by the demands of a vengeful and procrastinating Donald Trump. »
The GOP investigation into the Bidens is multi-pronged, including claims that the Bidens engaged in influence peddling, as well as some of that money being paid to President Biden himself during the vice presidency .
House Republicans failed to show that President Biden took a bribe, and the White House said his actions to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor for failing to fight corruption did not no connection to his son’s work on the board of directors of a Ukrainian energy company. The White House has vigorously denied any wrongdoing.
And Weiss said Tuesday that he retained full control of the investigation in Hunter Biden, pushing back against GOP claims that his prosecution was blocked by DOJ leadership.
The committee already has substantial information about Walker, who was previously interviewed by the FBI in 2020 and said President Biden had little information about involvement in his son’s business practices.
“I certainly never thought the vice president was a part of anything we did,” he told the office at the time.
This came in response to claims by Bobulinski, who Hunter Biden said he was only briefly involved with, that the president’s son planned to hold money for a figure Bobulinski assumed was his father.
Walker told the FBI it was “wishful thinking” that President Biden would ever be involved in their affairs.
Since gaining access to both Bidens’ personal banking records, Republicans have pointed to two checks between the brothers characterized as personal loans that were sent after Biden left office.
While the Republican Party suggested they came after major business deals, a $200,000 loan was repaid after James Biden’s work with a US company. A $40,000 check between the brothers came after Hunter Biden obtained money from a Chinese company, then transferring money to his uncle’s company, which then transferred it to his account staff.
Democrats have argued that the funds show nothing more than a short-term loan between family members made while Biden was a private citizen.
Although the Republican Party has fanned the flames, it has yet to find compelling evidence that would imply that the president benefits directly from his family’s international business dealings or that he makes policy decisions as vice president because of these.
The bulk of the allegations date back to President Biden’s efforts as vice president to remove Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Republicans say these measures are not due to Shokin’s failure to fight corruption, as Biden has said, but rather to benefit his son while he worked on the energy company’s board. Ukrainian Burisma.
But Biden’s actions were consistent with those of the international community, and State Department correspondence from the time shows that the United States suspended aid to Ukraine due to concerns that it could not of Shokin to undertake significant reforms.
Shokin wasn’t pursuing Burisma either; his deputy said an earlier investigation had become inactive by the time Biden was involved. U.S. concern about aid to Ukraine was due to Shokin’s inability to be an aggressive prosecutor.
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