On Thursday, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) sent a formal invite to President Joe Biden to testify as part of a corruption-focused impeachment inquiry on alleged influence peddling.
Comer said in a letter to Biden his panel is proposing April 16 for a hearing to occur and noted that it is “open to accommodating” the president’s schedule. The chairman also posed a series of questions, asking Biden to respond in writing about whether he met or otherwise interacted with specific foreign business executives, as well as details on the context of the contacts.
House investigators accounted for $24 million that “flowed” toward Biden, his family, and their business associates from other countries such as China and Ukraine, but the committee has “identified no legitimate services to merit such lucrative payments,” Comer said.
Evidence including bank records and witness testimony “wholly contradicts” Biden’s denial about being involved in his family’s business activities,” Comer said. The chairman accused the White House of taking a “position hostile” to his panel’s investigation and “refuses to release certain information or make available witnesses to testify regarding issues” to the inquiry.
“In light of the yawning gap between your public statements and the evidence assembled by the Committee, as well as the White House’s obstruction, it is in the best interest of the American people for you to answer questions from Members of Congress directly, and I hereby invite you to do so,” Comer said.
The invitation comes a little more than a week after a pair of former Biden family associates, Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis, testified in a public hearing that Biden did participate in his family’s business dealings. The president’s son, Hunter Biden, declined to attend following a closed-door interview last month in which he insisted his father was not involved in his deals.
“The public is left with two irreconcilable narratives,” Comer said. “The first — asserted by you — is that you did not engage in influence peddling in exchange for payments to your family. The second asserted by witnesses and a body of evidence … is that you were indeed involved in these pay-for-influence schemes and that you have been repeatedly untruthful regarding a matter relevant to national security and your own fitness to serve” as president.
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When Comer announced at the end of last week’s hearing that he planned to invite President Biden to testify, Oversight Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) asked Comer if he would also invite former President Donald Trump to talk about his alleged emoluments violations and claimed there is no evidence of the elder Biden committing high crimes and misdemeanors.
The White House also offered a dismissive response. Spokesman Ian Sams issued a post to X that started with “LOL” and an emoji of a man doing a facepalm.
“Comer knows 20+ witnesses have testified that POTUS did nothing wrong. He knows that the hundreds of thousands of pages of records he’s received have refuted his false allegations,” Sams said. “This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment,” he added. “Call it a day, pal.”
While it remains unclear whether the House Republicans will ultimately introduce articles of impeachment against Biden, let alone have enough votes to pass them in the narrowly-divided House, Comer recently suggested there will be criminal referrals that come out of the inquiry.
The president’s brother, James Biden, is among the other witnesses to provide testimony for the impeachment inquiry. He also denied President Biden was involved in his business affairs. Some former associates, including Bobulinski and Devon Archer, have insisted there were interactions in which President Biden was the “brand” that was sold by his family.