House Republicans have opened a new front in their effort to impeach President Joe Biden.
In a letter to White House lawyers on Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said GOP lawmakers are now looking at Biden for an obstruction charge because he knew his son Hunter was going to defy a subpoena to testify before Congress.
Hunter Biden did so on Dec. 13. He failed to show up for a closed-door deposition that Republicans said was necessary before they would grant Hunter a public hearing.
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Instead, he held a press conference outside the Capitol and claimed that he was “a target of the unrelenting Trump attack team.” Republicans, he added, “have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass my father, who has devoted his entire life to public service.”
Hunter added that President Biden was not “financially” involved in Hunter’s shady overseas business deals. That was a sharp departure from Joe once saying he had never discussed Hunter’s business deals with his son.
But Joe Biden’s press secretary gave GOP lawmakers an opening to ponder whether the president had played a role in Hunter defying a lawful subpoena.
In their letter, Comer and Jordan noted White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters after Hunter’s grandstanding that President Biden was “certainly familiar with what his son was going to say.”
While she refused to say more, Jean-Pierre’s comment “suggests that the President had some amount of advanced knowledge that Mr. Biden would choose to defy two congressional subpoenas,” the lawmakers wrote.
They further noted that under the federal criminal code, it is illegal to “corruptly . . . endeavor to influence, obstruct, or impede the due and proper exercise of the power of inquiry under which any investigation or inquiry is being had by . . . any committee of either House or any joint committee of the Congress[.]”
Accordingly, they added, anyone who “aids, abets, counsels, commands, induces or procures” a crime is punishable as a “principal” in that crime.
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“In light of Ms. Jean-Pierre’s statement, we are compelled to examine the involvement of the President in his son’s scheme to defy the Committees’ subpoenas,” the lawmakers added.
“The Committees have accumulated substantial evidence that Hunter Biden’s business endeavors have improperly included his father, and the President has made false claims about his knowledge and involvement in these schemes,” the letter continued.
“The President has met with, spoken to, and received money sourced from his son’s foreign business partners. In light of this evidence, the fact that the President had advanced awareness that Mr. Biden would defy the Committees’ subpoenas raises a troubling new question that we must examine: whether the President corruptly sought to influence or obstruct the Committees’ proceeding by preventing, discouraging, or dissuading his son from complying with the Committees’ subpoenas,” Comer and Jordan wrote.
“Such conduct could constitute an impeachable offense.”
They gave the White House legal staff until Jan. 10 to comply with their request for documents received or sent by Joe Biden’s staff about Hunter’s deposition and Joe’s past comments about his son’s business deals.
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