WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee issued subpoenas Wednesday demanding closed-door testimony from President Biden’s son Hunter and brother James as part of the GOP impeachment inquiry into the family’s foreign business dealings.
James, 73, and Hunter, 53, regularly involved their powerful relative in their business relationships during his eight-year vice presidency and in the years that followed, including in ventures involving China and Ukraine.
“The House Oversight Committee has followed the money and built a record of evidence revealing how Joe Biden knew, was involved, and benefited from his family’s influence peddling schemes,” said committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.).
“Now, the House Oversight Committee is going to bring in members of the Biden family and their associates to question them on this record of evidence.”
The Republican-led panel also issued a subpoena for the testimony of close Biden family associate Rob Walker and requested voluntary testimony from James Biden’s wife Sara and Hunter Biden’s ex-girlfriend/sister-in-law Hallie and current wife Melissa Cohen.
The committee also issued requests for testimony from former Biden family associate Tony Bobulinski and Hallie Biden’s sister Elizabeth Secundy.
“Unlike the many lies President Biden told the American people about his family’s business schemes, bank records don’t lie,” Comer said.
“These records reveal how the Bidens sold Joe Biden around to the world to benefit the Biden family, including Joe Biden himself, to the detriment of US interests.”
Comer recently released subpoenaed bank records showing that James Biden paid his brother $40,000 in 2017 and $200,000 in 2018 in checks labeled “loan repayment.”
He said the first sum was from “laundered” China-originating funds and the latter from James’ receipt of $200,000 from a troubled US hospital provider whom he had promised to find a Mideast investor, allegedly showing the president benefited from those dealings, even if the transfers were indeed related to loans.
The White House has said there’s evidence the transfers were in fact loans, though Comer aides say that the money transferred to James Biden actually came from a law firm associated with multiple Biden relatives, clouding the picture.
As a presidential candidate, Biden repeatedly said he “never” talked business with his family members, but evidence has emerged that while vice president he interacted with their associates from China, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Russia, and Ukraine.
Former Hunter Biden associate Devon Archer told the Oversight Committee in a July 31 deposition that Joe Biden was on speaker phone for roughly 20 of his son’s business meetings and that Hunter and two executives from Ukrainian gas company Burisma called then-Vice President Biden from Dubai in December 2015.
Comer is investigating an array of allegations of malfeasance, including an unproven FBI informant’s claim that Burisma owner Mykola Zlochevsky revealed in 2016 that he was “coerced” into paying Joe and Hunter Biden $10 million in bribes.
In 2013, Joe Biden met for coffee in Beijing with his son’s business partner Jonathan Li fewer than two weeks before he and Hunter Biden launched the Chinese state-backed investment fund BHR Partners, in which Hunter held a 10% state through at least part of his dad’s term as president.
In a second Chinese business deal, with state-linked CEFC China Energy, Joe Biden allegedly met with his son and brother’s associates — and in a May 2017 email was referred to as the “big guy” due to a potential 10% cut.
Joe Biden also was listed as a participant in an October 2017 call about the firm’s attempt to purchase US natural gas.
Hunter invoked his father’s potential wrath in a July 2017 text message demanding that a China-based CEFC associate follow through with a business deal, writing he was “sitting here with my father.”
Within 10 days of the threat, $5.1 million flowed to Biden-linked accounts — following an initial $1 million tranche in March 2017, less than two months after Joe Biden completed his vice presidency.
Hunter Biden wrote in a January 2019 message retrieved from his former laptop that he had to give “half” of his income to Joe Biden and the Oversight Committee in May identified nine Biden family members who allegedly received foreign funds.
The first son launched a new career as an artist shortly after his father entered the White House and reportedly has sold at least $1.3 million in his novice artworks.
The Oversight Committee is seeking information on those buyers.
One of them reportedly is Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, who was able to score many visits to the Biden White House and a presidential appointment to a prestigious board.