House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said his investigation into the Biden family's foreign business dealings will continue through the August recess, with plans to subpoena multiple possible witnesses to sit for transcribed interviews.
Comer told reporters on Wednesday he has obtained new bank records from “shell companies” connected to the Biden family that he claims show money being routed to them that originated in different countries, predominantly Ukraine.
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“Every wire initially, they never went directly to a Biden. They would start out in a shell company that the Bidens would have an interest in, and then it would be wired to another shell company that the Bidens would wholly own. That's called money laundering,” Comer claimed. “And I'm in the banking business — that's one thing I do know, banking laws.”
His committee also plans on subpoenaing some of the business associates of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son, to sit for a deposition or transcribed interview over the recess.
Devon Archer will be the first to sit for a transcribed interview on Monday to provide more insight.
Both Archer and Hunter Biden served on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2014. Prior to that, both men worked alongside each other at the Rosemont Seneca Partners investment firm.
After talking to Archer, Comer said the committee has “about three more people” it wants to talk to, and they “will go in a series.”
One of those individuals is Rob Walker, but Comer hasn’t subpoenaed him yet, he said.
The House Oversight Committee found earlier this year through subpoenaed bank records that Walker apparently wired over $1 million in incremental payments “from 2015 through 2017” to Hunter Biden; James Biden, the president's brother; and Hallie Biden, the widow of Beau Biden, the president’s late son.
Back in March, Comer released a memo claiming that State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to Robinson Walker LLC, an account that belonged to Walker. From there, Comer said, “Biden family members and their companies began receiving incremental payments over a period of approximately three months” from Robinson Walker LLC.
Much of their investigation right now is centered on "what the Bidens did to receive the money."
“We don't know,” Comer said. “No one has ever answered that question. So, we're trying to bring people in now that were involved in some of these shell companies with the Bidens to ask simple questions. Like, what exactly did the Bidens do to receive his $3 million wire from China? What exactly did the Bidens do to receive these 17 wires from Romania? And then we have other bank transactions we haven't made public yet. So, we have a lot of questions about that.”
He claimed the pattern of money transfers seen in the bank records is "consistent" with allegations made in the FBI-generated FD-1023 tip sheet that Hunter Biden and then-Vice President Joe Biden were involved in a multimillion-dollar foreign bribery scheme.
The White House denies the president was involved in Hunter Biden's business dealings.
In the document, Mykola Zlochevsky, head of the Ukrainian energy company Busirsma, tells a paid FBI informant that it would take investigators "10 years to find the records" because of all the companies and bank accounts the payments were routed through. Zlochevsky tells the FBI informant that he paid the Bidens so they would pressure the Ukrainian government to fire Viktor Shokin, who was allegedly investigating Burisma.
In addition, Comer said that over the recess, he hopes to be able to release the transcription of the interview he had with a former FBI supervisory agent who was assigned to the criminal case of Hunter Biden, who is facing tax evasion and gun charges.
He claims the agent’s testimony corroborates the testimony of the two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers alleging political interference in their investigation.
This testimony has become a point of contention as ranking member of House Oversight Jamie Raskin (D-MD) publicly accused Comer of “concealing” the information.
The transcribed interview with the agent was announced on July 17. Comer has told reporters his ultimate goal is to release the testimony but that they’re still working through the legal process before they can publicly release it.
But in a letter sent to Comer on Friday, Raskin said the testimony actually “discredited House Republicans’ claim of political interference in the prosecution of President Biden’s son,” which is why Comer has yet to release it.
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“This failure to release a transcript is the latest in your troubling pattern of concealing key evidence in order to advance a false and distorted narrative about your ‘investigation of Joe Biden’ that has not only failed to develop any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden but has, in fact, uncovered substantial evidence to the contrary,” Raskin said in a letter to Comer.
House Oversight Republicans pushed back on Raskin’s letter, saying in a post that the “transcript is going through the normal review process where the witness and his/her counsel reviews it and is able to suggest any corrections needed,” and that once that process is completed, they will release the transcription.