OAN’s Brooke Mallory
2:13 PM – Friday, January 12, 2024
In an attempt to postpone a vote that could take place as soon as next week to find Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress, Hunter finally gave in on Friday and consented to testify in the House impeachment investigation concerning his father, President Joe Biden.
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Hunter, 53, “raised a white flag” in a letter to Congress with help from his lawyer, Abbe Lowell.
Hunter had previously declined to partake in a deposition behind closed doors, claiming that he was afraid that his statements would be misconstrued.
“If you issue a new proper subpoena, now that there is a duly authorized impeachment inquiry, Mr. Biden will comply for a hearing or deposition. We will accept such a subpoena on Mr. Biden’s behalf,” Lowell wrote.
Following Hunter’s recent chaotic disruption of the Oversight hearing, which infuriated Republicans, the House Judiciary and Oversight committees separately decided on Wednesday to punish Hunter in contempt.
Hunter skipped the planned deposition on December 13th in favor of a confrontational statement in which he asserted that his father was not “financially involved” in making millions of dollars from his foreign business operations overseas.
The minimum sentence for contempt of Congress is 30 days in jail, however, if the full House votes in favor of the penalty, President Biden’s nominees in the Justice Department will decide whether to pursue legal action.
It was unclear on Friday if the House would continue to vote on the contempt resolution while they looked into the president’s involvement in Hunter and James Biden’s business transactions in nations like China, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and even Russia.
Republicans maintain that President Biden had been involved in his son and brother’s foreign business affairs and was also profiting from them, even while serving as vice president.
Republicans have expressed that they would be happy to hold a public hearing with Hunter Biden, who frequently included his father in his foreign dealings, but only after following a deposition conducted behind closed doors by committee staff members who would go through details in order to create a record for the investigation.
In July, the first son pulled out of a probation-only plea agreement because he wanted guarantees in court that he would not be held accountable for any additional actions, such as suspected breaches of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which could have implicated his father.
House investigators are looking into claims made by two IRS whistleblowers that Justice Department officials protected Joe and Hunter Biden during a five-year probe that was mostly concerned with Hunter’s tax evasion, in addition to the suspected influence-peddling.
In their testimony last year, IRS supervisor Gary Shapley and case agent Joseph Ziegler maintained that Attorney General Merrick Garland and other DOJ officials had misled Congress about the probe, alerted Hunter’s legal team to their investigative steps, withheld evidence and important leads, and had forbidden lines of inquiry into Joe Biden—even when communications directly implicated him.
Joe Biden’s assertions made throughout the 2020 campaign that he “never” talked business with his son or brother and his assurance last month that he “did not” communicate with any of their overseas partners are contradicted by the growing body of evidence demonstrating his involvement in the foreign connections.
Democrats also still claim that there’s no proof of corruption.
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