After signaling otherwise earlier in the week, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) — a frequent critic of President Trump and the lone Republican to vote guilty on one of the Democrats’ articles of impeachment — is going to vote in favor of subpoenaing a consultant connected to Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company that paid Hunter Biden tens of thousands of dollars a month to serve on its board while his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, headed up U.S.-Ukraine relations.
On Thursday, Romney indicated that he was leaning toward once again breaking with his fellow Republicans to reject the measure, telling reporters, “There’s no question but that the appearance of looking into Burisma and Hunter Biden appears political, and I think people are tired of these kind of political investigations.” The senator added that he “would prefer that investigations are done by an independent, nonpolitical body.”
But, as The Hill reports, Romney’s spokeswoman Liz Johnson said Friday that after meeting with the senator who’s leading the investigation, Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Ron Johnson (R-WI), Romney has decided to support the subpoena of former Blue Star Strategies consultant Andrii Telizhenko.
“Senator Romney has expressed his concerns to Chairman Johnson, who has confirmed that any interview of the witness would occur in a closed setting without a hearing or public spectacle,” said Johnson. “He will therefore vote to let the Chairman proceed to obtain the documents that have been offered.”
With Romney agreeing to vote for the subpoena, Johnson has the simple majority necessary to issue the subpoena requiring Telizhenko to potentially provide relevant documents to and speak with the panel as part of its investigation into potential corruption involving Burisma and the Bidens.
The subpoena the panel is now poised to pass involves Washington-based consulting firm Blue Star Strategies, which worked with Burisma and which referenced Hunter Biden in its communications with the State Department on Burisma’s behalf, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
As The Daily Wire reported, Johnson provided some updates to the press this week on his panel’s investigation into potential Ukrainian corruption involving Burisma. The Senate Homeland Security Committee chair told reporters Wednesday that he expects to release an interim report on the investigation within one to two months.
Referencing then-Vice President Joe Biden’s successful pressuring of Ukraine’s president to remove Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin, who was pushing to investigate potential corruption involving Burisma, Johnson told reporters Wednesday, “[I]f I were a Democrat primary voter, I’d want these questions satisfactorily answered before I cast my final vote.”
“My investigations are not focused on the Bidens. They’re just not,” Johnson said. “But I can’t ignore them because they’re part of the story. They made themselves part of the story. If there’s wrongdoing, the American people need to know it. If there is no wrongdoing or nothing significant, the American people need to understand that as well.”
In an appearance on Fox News Wednesday, Johnson said, “I know it was a big explanation that everybody wanted him fired, but there is a document, we have to verify it, but there is a document supposedly contemporaneous that said that the contact by Blue Star to the prosecutor general’s office was all about apologizing for the misinformation campaign conducted against Shokin. Kind of raises some eyebrows, some questions that need to be answered.”
Biden has consistently denied any wrongdoing, portraying the Republicans’ interest in Burisma and the removal of Shokin as conspiratorial and politically motivated. On Wednesday, Biden’s campaign responded to Johnson’s statements to the press by saying the committee chair just did the Democratic frontrunner “an enormous favor.” “Senator Johnson just accidentally did us an enormous favor by explicitly admitting that he is abusing congressional authority in a manner that would make the founding fathers spin in their graves,” said campaign spokesman Andrew Bates.
Trump also responded to Johnson’s announcement about the release of the interim report, telling Fox News Wednesday night, that Burisma remains “a major issue” for Biden and vowing to “bring that up all the time because I don’t see any way out” for Biden.