WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer asked special counsel Robert Hur Monday to divulge whether any classified documents improperly retained by President Biden following his vice presidency deal with countries where his son Hunter did business.
Comer (R-Ky.) also asked Hur to detail the scope of his office’s two-day interview with the president last week and “any limitations or scoping restrictions during the interview that would have precluded a line of inquiry regarding evidence (emails, text messages, or witness statements) directly linking Joe Biden to troublesome foreign payments.”
The Oversight Committee is one of three panels leading the impeachment inquiry into Biden’s role in his family’s foreign business dealings.
On Sept. 28, Comer subpoenaed the bank records of Hunter and first brother James Biden, who regularly involved Joe Biden in their business relationships.
“If any of the classified documents mishandled by President Biden involved countries or individuals that had financial dealings with Biden family members or their related companies, the Committee needs access to that information to evaluate whether our national security has been compromised,” Comer wrote to Hur.
“The Committee is concerned that President Biden may have retained sensitive documents related to specific countries involving his family’s foreign business.”
CNN reported in January that 10 classified documents — touching on Iran, Ukraine and the UK — were recovered from Biden’s post-vice presidency office at the Penn Biden Center in Washington. The records reportedly date from 2013 to 2016, during which time Hunter earned up to $1 million per year working for Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings — while his father led the Obama administration’s Ukraine portfolio.
Some of the documents reportedly were labeled “top secret.”
Comer wrote that “evidence suggests President Biden may have used certain members of his family—particularly his son, Hunter Biden — to accumulate millions of dollars from foreign individuals and entities for the benefit of his family and himself.”
So far, the classified documents investigation has not become intertwined with the impeachment inquiry into Biden regularly interacting while vice president with his relatives’ foreign partners.
There’s evidence that Joe Biden met — both in DC and while overseas — with his family members’ associates from China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia and Ukraine.
An Associated Press poll released Saturday found that 68% of Americans, including 40% of Democrats, say President Biden acted either illegally or unethically in his son’s business dealings.
Hunter Biden agreed in June to plead guilty to tax evasion related to some of those ventures, but later walked away from the probation-only deal. He pleaded not guilty earlier this month to federal weapons and false statements charges.
Hur is investigating whether Biden or anyone in his orbit broke the law by mishandling classified records. A different special counsel, Jack Smith, has criminally charged former President Donald Trump for allegedly hoarding national security information after he left office.
Biden did not publicly disclose for more than two months the Nov. 2 recovery of classified documents at his former DC office — and the Oversight Committee last week released records showing that White House aides may have been reviewing the records as early as March 2021.
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote in a Saturday op-ed in The Hill that the earlier discovery means that “[t]he timeline would now more closely mirror Trump’s timeline in the knowing retention of classified material, the failure to turn over all of the classified material despite assurances from counsel, and alleged false accounts about the document’s discovery.”
A second batch of classified records was found Dec. 20 inside Biden’s Wilmington, Del., garage next to his classic Corvette. At least three additional searches, including by the FBI, uncovered more sensitive documents.
“My Corvette is in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Biden snapped at the time.
The president has claimed that the documents are stray papers from his time in the Senate as well as vice president, saying at another point in January that there was “no ‘there’ there.”
A spokesman for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Comer’s request. A Hur spokeswoman said, “DOJ can confirm receipt of the letter but declines to comment further.”