OAN’s Brooke Mallory
1:51 PM – Friday, January 5, 2024
House Republicans said on Friday, that they will attempt to hold President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in contempt of Congress starting next week. Hunter had declined to appear before a congressional subpoena for testimony behind closed doors.
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Hunter Biden’s rejection of the subpoena will be penalized, according to a resolution and supporting report that Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) indicated his panel will discuss on Wednesday. The entire House would then need to approve the contempt resolution if it is advanced by the Oversight panel.
The president’s son was asked to testify for a private deposition on December 13th by the Oversight and Judiciary Committees, but he rejected the request. Instead, Hunter Biden made a quick speech to reporters outside the U.S. Capitol, restating his commitment to solely respond to questions from lawmakers in a public forum. Republicans, he claimed, were “distorting the facts” and disclosing material from previous interviews conducted behind closed doors with witnesses testifying before House committees.
Hunter Biden’s defiance of their subpoenas for testimony, according to Comer and Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), is a contempt of Congress and should be sent to federal prosecutors, Jordan stated on Friday.
“We will not provide him with special treatment because of his last name,” Comer and Jordan said in a conjoined statement.
The top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD.), criticized Comer for deciding to schedule a vote on the contempt resolution, claiming that the House has never before held a private individual in contempt of Congress for offering to testify in public.
“Chairman Comer does not want Hunter Biden to testify in public, just as he has refused to publicly release over a dozen interview transcripts, because he wants to keep up the carefully curated distortions, blatant lies, and laughable conspiracy theories that have marked this investigation,” he said. “However, the facts and the evidence all show no wrongdoing and no impeachable offense by President Biden.”
Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, also blasted House GOP members in a statement to CBS News.
“It’s clear the Republican Chairmen aren’t interested in getting the facts or they would allow Hunter to testify publicly. Instead, House Republicans continue to play politics by seeking an unprecedented contempt motion against someone who has from the first request offered to answer all their proper questions,” he said. “What are they afraid of?”
Hunter Biden has been the target of a nearly year-long investigation by GOP senators who assert that the current president is making money off of his son’s foreign financial dealings.
The GOP-led House officially opened an impeachment investigation of the president last month with a bipartisan vote. Comer and Jordan, leading the Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means panels in their investigation, asked the White House for details on Biden’s purported role in his son’s disobedience of the congressional subpoena.
They extended the deadline for the White House to provide papers pertaining to Hunter Biden’s planned deposition until Wednesday.
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