House demands records on Joe Biden’s ‘involvement’ in Hunter dealings
The head of the House Oversight Committee has demanded that Hunter Biden turn over any records related to his father’s alleged “involvement” in controversial overseas business dealings that could imperil American national security.
In a Wednesday letter to the first son, committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) accused him and his business associates of having “peddled influence to generate millions of dollars for the Biden family.”
“Evidence shows that you engaged in foreign business deals with individuals who were connected to the Chinese Communist Party and received significant amounts of money from foreign companies without providing any known legitimate services,” he wrote.
“You and your associates’ financial conduct raises significant ethics and national security concerns. The Committee requests documents and communications related to our investigation of President Biden’s involvement in your financial conduct.”
Comer said the committee needed the information to determine whether the 80-year-old president “has compromised our national security at the expense of the American people.”
On Wednesday, the committee held a hearing into Twitter’s acknowledged suppression of The Post’s October 2020 scoop that revealed the existence of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop.
Comer’s letter gave Hunter Biden a Feb. 22 deadline to turn over any relevant records involving him and his dad beginning from Jan. 20, 2009 — when the elder Biden was sworn in for the first of his two terms as vice president — to Jan. 20, 2021, when he was sworn in as president.
In the wake of the scandal over President Biden’s possession of classified documents, Comer also demanded that his son, 53, cough up “any document, record, or communication designated classified by any government body, including but not limited to any constituent agency of the US Intelligence Community.”
Similar letters were also sent to President Biden’s brother, James Biden, and Eric Schwerin, a former Hunter Biden business partner.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, responded to Comer with a letter that said his committee didn’t have the power to demand records from his client due to a 2020 ruling by the US Supreme Court in a case involving congressional subpoenas for then-President Donald Trump’s finances and tax returns.
Lowell also invoked the classic children’s fantasy book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” to accuse Comer of trying to “make every aspect of [Hunter] Biden’s personal life your political weapon.”
“Peddling your own inaccurate and baseless conclusions under the guise of a real investigation, turns the Committee into ‘Wonderland’ and you into the Queen of Hearts shouting, ‘sentence first, verdict afterwards,’” Lowell wrote.
Requests for comment from James Biden and Schwerin weren’t immediately returned.
President Biden has repeatedly denied any involvement in his son’s business dealings, including even discussing them.
But emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop showed that he introduced his dad to a top exec at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma in 2015, while Hunter Biden was serving on its board.
Other emails showed how Hunter Biden pursued a lucrative deal with a Chinese energy conglomerate, CEFC China Energy Co., that included a plan for 10% of the equity to be “held by H for the big guy.”
Another partner, former British special forces officer James Gilliar, also referred to Joe Biden as “the Big Guy” in a 2020 message prompted by The Post’s scoop about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Post columnist Miranda Devine reported earlier this year.
CEFC paid entities controlled by Hunter and James Biden a total of $4.8 million during a 14-month period that began in August 2017, according to The Washington Post, which last year independently authenticated nearly 22,000 emails from the laptop.
Last week, Lowell sent letters to the US Justice Department, the IRS and the Delaware Attorney General’s Office seeking probes of several allies of Trump, 76, and others in connection with “the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of [Hunter] Biden’s private and personal information” on the laptop.
Lowell reportedly followed up those requests with letters directing the potential targets — who include former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House adviser Steve Bannon — to retain any records that might be needed in connection with future litigation.
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