(CNSNews.com) - Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, says the Biden family received "tens of millions of dollars" from "probably a dozen or more countries," and some of the alleged influence-peddling apparently went on while Joe Biden was vice president.
"There are two things every American's going to realize at the conclusion of our investigation,” Comer told Fox News's Sean Hannity Tuesday night.
“And that's, number one, that multiple members of the Biden family were involved in the influence-peddling schemes. And number two, most of these big deals were initiated in Joe Biden's term as vice president.
"Now the narrative that the defenders in the media are trying to portray on Hunter Biden, now that the laptop has been proven to be real and the evidence on it is legitimate, is that, well, these deals happened just by the president's son -- who, by the way, had an addiction problem. And it didn't matter because Joe Biden wasn't in office during this time.
"That's not true. These deals were initiated while Joe Biden was vice president, and multiple members of the family were involved in this scheme."
Comer said his committee has requested bank records and suspicious activity reports "so we can have one hundred percent evidence."
"But I can tell you that we're pretty confident that many of these deals that were done during the Biden vice presidency -- the pay day came shortly after Joe Biden left office.
"So this is a very well-organized family that has been involved in, you know, shady business dealings with our adversaries, not just in Russia, Ukraine and China, which we all know about, but also in the Middle East.
"And what I found with the president's brother Jim -- he operated mainly in the Middle East. There were multiple deals in the Middle East where Jim Biden was influence-peddling.
"So this is a story that going to continue to grow. As you know, we've made requests; we're standing up the process to begin to have successful subpoenas issued. But as you know, Sean, you have to start out by requesting the information. We're giving the White House every opportunity to comply with our request."
The committee has hit one roadblock. Hunter Biden's attorneys have refused to give the committee the information it seeks, saying it doesn't serve a legislative purpose.
"That's not true. This does have a legislative purpose," Comer said.
"The Democrats have been complaining about influence peddling. The Biden family's obviously been influence peddling.
"So we need to define what is influence peddling. We need to make stricter ethics laws. We also need to increase the disclosure laws for family members doing business overseas while they have a relative that serves in the White House.
"We can't fully understand the extent of what these laws need to be until we know the exact amount of money that the Biden family took in from the sources."
Comer said the next step will be subpoenas.
"I mean, we will use subpoena power. For the subpoenas to win in court, we have to give them every opportunity to supply that information to us, and the ball is in their court right now, Sean."