WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer accused the White House Friday morning of obstructing an impeachment inquiry into President Biden — as the White House countered with a memo claiming it actually has shown remarkable cooperation.
A source familiar with Comer’s remarks during a closed-door meeting of Republican lawmakers told The Post that he emphasized the administration’s failure to produce emails sent or received by Biden using an email account registered to pseudonyms during his eight-year vice presidency.
Comer, who on Friday afternoon sent a letter to Hunter Biden’s legal team requesting confirmation that he will appear for his scheduled deposition later this month, told colleagues that his panel has received just 14 out of about 82,000 pages of Biden’s vice presidential emails known to exist.
Comer also accused Biden of repeatedly lying about his contacts with his relatives’ business associates, as well as about his family’s income from China, and said the White House has not complied with requests to interview an array of current and former officials.
The dispute over whether Biden aides are resisting document requests is a central focus as Republicans consider holding a House floor vote — possibly within the next two weeks — to retroactively authorize the impeachment inquiry and give it added momentum.
Biden’s son Hunter, 53, and brother James, 73, are due to testify under subpoena — on Dec. 13 and 6, respectively — about the president’s interactions with their business partners from China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine.
A recent White House missive questioning the legal grounds the inquiry has spurred GOP momentum toward a possible floor vote. Republican leaders called off a planned September vote due to reluctance from swing-district legislators.
The White House insisted Friday it actually has cooperated with document requests — in an apparent attempt to head off a retroactive authorization.
White House counsel’s office spokesman Ian Sams asserted in a two-page press release: “Claims of ‘obstruction’ and ‘stonewalling’ are easily refuted by the facts.”
Sams argued that Comer has received “more than 35,000 pages of private financial records,” “more than 2,000 pages of Treasury Department financial reports” and “thousands of Vice Presidential-era records released by the National Archives.”
However, House Republicans note that there are other unfulfilled requests from the Oversight Committee, which is leading the inquiry alongside the Judiciary and tax-focused Ways & Means committees.
In addition to Biden’s vice presidential emails, Republicans are seeking — but have not yet received — Air Force Two flight manifests believed to show first family associates joining official trips to countries where they were seeking out business.
Comer also wants communications involving vice presidential aides and Biden family business entities.
GOP investigators are still waiting to receive visitor logs from Biden’s Delaware residences and information about the content of classified documents dating to his Senate tenure that were found last year at his Wilmington home, to see if they pertain to nations where his family did business.
The panel also has demanded records of people who purchased the first son’s novice artworks since his father took office as president.
Although the Biden White House has itself raised concerns about money laundering through high-priced art purchases, Hunter has reportedly sold at least $1.3 million worth of his works to mostly unknown buyers — though one reported purchaser scored visits to the Biden White House and a prestigious presidential commission appointment.
The FBI, meanwhile, has not provided requested information about what was done to investigate an informant’s tip that Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings owner Mykola Zlochevsky said in 2016 he was “coerced” into paying $10 million in bribes to the Bidens in exchange for help ousting a prosecutor who investigated the company.
Burisma paid Hunter Biden up to $1 million per year beginning in early 2014, when Joe Biden took the lead on the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy and secretly dined with Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi in April 2015.
Hunter in December 2015 called his father from Dubai with Pozharskyi and Zlochevsky, former Biden family associate Devon Archer told the Oversight Committee on July 31 — preceding Joe Biden’s push to oust the prosecutor as a condition of $1 billion in US foreign aid, a move documents show surprised other US officials working on Ukraine policy.
Biden has denied knowing about or ever discussing business dealings with members of his family, but the impeachment inquiry has turned up significant evidence to the contrary.
Archer told the Oversight Committee that Hunter put his father on speakerphone during roughly 20 business meetings with foreign associates and that Joe Biden while vice president had two dinners at DC’s Cafe Milano — in 2014 and 2015 — with his son’s Kazakhstani, Russian and Ukrainian patrons.
Archer also said that Joe Biden had coffee — rather than exchanged a mere handshake — in December 2013 with Jonathan Li, the incoming CEO of Chinese state-backed investment fund BHR Partners, which Hunter cofounded within weeks of joining his father aboard Air Force Two for a trip to Beijing.
The then-second son also put Joe Biden on speakerphone with Li during a subsequent business trip by to China, Archer said, while the future president wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
Hunter Biden held a 10% stake in BHR through at least part of his father’s first year in office as president and the terms of his divestment remain murky.
As part of a later Chinese venture with state-linked company CEFC China Energy, Joe Biden allegedly met twice with his son and brother’s partners and was even penciled in as the “big guy” due a 10% cut, as documented in a May 2017 email months after he left office as vice president.
Hunter Biden, James Biden and the president’s daughter-in-law Hallie Biden received more than $1 million in early 2017 from CEFC-associated firm State Energy HK, according to bank records released by the Oversight Committee.
As part of the same Chinese business relationship, Hunter sent a threatening July 30, 2017, WhatsApp message to a China-based associate warning that he was “sitting here with my father” and threatening retribution if the deal was aborted, immediately preceding the transfer of $5.1 million from CEFC to Biden-linked accounts.
IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who alleged a coverup in the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden for not paying about $2 million in federal taxes, said they were not allowed to acquire cellphone location data to determine if Joe Biden actually was sitting next to Hunter, though photos from his abandoned laptop indicate he was at his dad’s Wilmington home that day.
A bank money laundering expert wrote in an internal email released this week by Comer that the financial institution should consider severing ties with Hunter Biden because the payments appeared to have been for “no services rendered.”