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WASHINGTON — House Republicans filed their first formal requests Thursday for documents from Hunter and James Biden regarding their foreign business dealings, intensifying a wide-ranging investigation into the president’s family.
Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, sent letters to President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter; the president’s brother, James; and their former business manager seeking records and communications related to overseas business activities “with individuals linked to the Chinese Communist Party.”
“If President Biden is compromised by agreements with foreign adversaries and these impact his decision-making, this constitutes a threat to national security,” Comer said in a statement.
The letters are the latest action by Republicans to sue the Biden family for what they claim is “influence peddling” but have so far failed to produce supporting evidence. of these assertions.
General requests include any “designated classified” records and communications between the President or James Biden and his wife, Sara Jones Biden, and Hunter Biden from January 20, 2009, regarding travel and financial activities.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden rejected the request Thursday, calling it an attempt by Comer to peddle his own “inaccurate and baseless conclusions under the guise of a real investigation.”
“As your letter is a sweeping attempt to collect a wide range of documents and communications from President Biden and his family, I am writing to explain that the Oversight and Accountability Committee has no legitimate legislative purpose or surveillance basis to request such documents from Mr. Biden, who is a private citizen,” attorney Abbe Lowell wrote in a letter to the committee.
Shortly after taking control of the House, Republicans, led by Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, launched a series of sprawling investigations into the president’s family, sending records requests to almost all government agencies.
Last month, Comer wielded the power of the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives to seek information from the Treasury Department about financial transactions of Biden family members flagged as suspicious activity. These reports are common, with larger financial transactions automatically reported to the government, and are not in themselves evidence of misconduct.
A few weeks later, the Kentucky Republican requested a transcribed interview with Georges Bergès, the art dealer who has exhibited Hunter Biden’s work in galleries in New York and Los Angeles since 2021. He requested communications between the gallery and the White House, citing Republican concerns that the younger Biden is trading his father’s name.
And on Wednesday, former Twitter executives testified before Congress about the company’s decision to initially block Twitter from an October 2020 New York Post article about the contents of a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden.
The former employees acknowledged during an hours-long and sometimes intense hearing that Twitter made a mistake by blocking a story about the president’s son in the run-up to the 2020 election, but categorically denied Republicans’ claims that which they had been pressured by Democrats and law enforcement. to delete the story.
