Republican members of the House Oversight Committee are demanding records of all communication between Hunter Biden and the White House during the two terms of the Barack Obama administration when his father, current POTUS Joe Biden, was vice president, reported New York Post.
“Hunter Biden’s connections throughout the Russian sphere of influence have now become especially relevant in the fast-moving and developing Russian war in Ukraine,” wrote the GOP representatives in letters sent on Thursday to the White House and the National Archives.
Reference here was made to the ongoing special operation carried out by Moscow to "demilitarise and de-Nazify Ukraine", launched after the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR respectively) asked for assistance to defend themselves from attacks by Ukrainian troops.
Specifically, the Republicans are seeking documents and communications between Hunter Biden and the White House or associates of the Biden family relating to Russia or Ukraine between 20 January 2009 and 20 January 2017.
They also want information from the White House from 20 January 2021 to the present, in other words, covering Joe Biden’s first 14 months in office.
From the White House counsel’s office, the GOP representatives seek access to a list of past and current foreign business interests and foreign relations involving Biden family members, as well as policies in place to ensure that none of them profit from Joe Biden’s current presidency.
Specifically from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) the Republicans want documents between then-Vice President Biden’s office and State Department officials that refer to Hunter Biden and his dealings in Ukraine and Russia.
‘Using Public Office for Self-Gain’
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), as well as 13 other Republicans who signed the letters, including Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona and Pete Sessions of Texas, have voiced concern whether Hunter Biden might “continue to profit” from his position, now as the son of the US President.
“If the Russian government is attempting to influence American policy in Ukraine by exploiting Hunter Biden’s connection with his father — the President of the United States — the American people deserve to know it,” said the letters, addressed to Dana Remus, the counsel to President Biden, and David Ferriero, the head archivist at the National Archives and Records Administration.
“The days of Hunter Biden using his father to line his own pockets are numbered. For years, concerns over Hunter’s shady foreign business dealings and the possibility he’s selling access to the President of the United States have been inexcusably ignored by Congressional Democrats,” said Rep. James Comer in a statement to The Post.
Comer insisted that Hunter Biden’s “unethical behaviour and sketchy business relationships in Russia and Ukraine” required urgent attention of the Oversight Committee. “Given the history of the Biden family using public office for self-gain, Oversight Republicans will continue to seek answers for the American people and use all available resources to hold Hunter Biden accountable,” Comer said in the statement.
According to the Republicans who signed the letters, when the Russian government on 15 March slapped a series of sanctions on President Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Hunter Biden had also been on the “stop list.”
Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement at the time that the move came in response to a "series of unprecedented sanctions" that include barring top Russian government officials from entering the United States over the current situation in Ukraine. Therefore, the ministry explained, US President Joe Biden and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, as well as US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and US chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, had been added to Russia's own reciprocal measures.
“It is the inclusion of Hunter Biden — decidedly not a ‘Democratic official’ — that raises serious questions. The nation’s adversaries apparently see the president’s son as a pressure point to exploit,” the GOP representatives have underscored in the Thursday letters.
The Republicans, who are a minority on the House Oversight Panel and in Congress, claim that the inclusion of Hunter Biden on the list raises questions about whether he “has indeed engaged in business schemes with our adversaries.”
GOP Demands for 'Full Accountability'
Previously, citing the need for “full truth” and “complete accountability”, Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., wrote letters to White House press secretary Jen Psaki, Chief of staff Ronald Klain, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, as well as multiple former US intelligence officials, demanding that all Hunter Biden-related records be preserved for a thorough GOP probe.
The Republicans have vowed that if they win back a majority in the House and Senate in the November midterm elections, Hunter Biden would be summoned before a hearing to answer questions about the notorious “laptop from hell” and his shady business dealings.
“We will subpoena Hunter Biden. It should concern every American that they did this for the Biden family’s financial gain, which came at the cost of our national security,” Rep. Elise Stefanik told The Post earlier.
Outrage had been triggered within the Republican ranks after The New York Times recently confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden's laptop after dismissing the original article in the New York Post (NYP) almost a year and a half ago as "Russian disinformation".
Back in 2020, the NYP reported that the Mac belonging to Hunter Biden, which he left at a repair shop in Delaware in 2019, contained several emails questioning claims by Joe Biden that he never used his former position as vice president to aid his son in the latter's foreign business dealings.
A subsequent series of exposes in The Post in October 2020 claimed that as part of Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings in Ukraine and China, he was paid up to $50,000 a month to sit on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Furthermore, Hunter Biden introduced his father, the then-vice president, to a top executive at the firm, thus “peddling access” to the senior Biden.
The NYT dismissed the Post story as “unsubstantiated”, while former intelligence officials, including ex-National Intelligence Director James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, released a letter saying that the information on the laptop bore all traces of a Russian “disinformation campaign.”
However, in its 16 March report about the ongoing federal probe into Hunter Biden's unpaid tax bills, the NYT said that when looking into the younger Biden's business dealings certain emails, scrutinised by prosecutors, were obtained from "a cache of files that appears to have come from a laptop abandoned by Mr. Biden in a Delaware repair shop".
Furthermore, "the email and others in the cache were authenticated by people familiar with them and with the investigation".
Republicans claim Hunter Biden and the rest of the family have profited from Joe Biden’s political influence as a longtime senator from Delaware and as vice president for eight years during the administration of Barack Obama.
“Hunter Biden has particularly benefited from his father’s success in politics, from managing a Ukrainian energy conglomerate, to selling cobalt mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, to connecting his father to Kazakhstani oil oligarchs, and preventing a Romanian real estate tycoon’s conviction for bribery charges,” claim Republicans in their Thursday letters.
As to President Joe Biden’s assurances that he has never spoken “to my son about his overseas business dealings,” Comer and his Republican colleagues are sceptical.
“This appears not to be true. The evidence is now clear that not only did Joe Biden talk to his son about his overseas business dealings, but he also met with his son’s associates,” write the GOP representatives.
The GOP signers have placed an April 14 deadline on receiving the documents relating to Hunter Biden.