James Comer, Jim Jordan lay out Biden impeachment probe

WASHINGTON — Three House committee chairmen briefed their fellow Republicans Thursday on the status of the impeachment inquiry into President Biden’s alleged role in his family’s foreign business dealings and an alleged cover-up by the Justice Department in the criminal investigation of first son Hunter Biden.

The closed-door meeting featured presentations on all developments since the last GOP conference meeting in July — before the long August recess that ended this week.

A three-page handout reviewed by The Post shows that the committee leaders emphasized recent allegations that have emerged concerning Joe Biden’s role in his son’s affairs while he was vice president — and what they’re doing to chase leads.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) spoke about bombshell claims that emerged from a July 31 interview with former Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer and requests he sent to the National Archives for Air Force Two flight manifests and emails in which Biden used a pseudonym while vice president.

Comer also spoke about his plan to subpoena the bank records of Hunter and first brother James Biden, which could provide additional evidence of foreign income while establishing whether any foreign funds flowed to Joe Biden or went toward covering his living expenses.

The Oversight chairman added that his panel plans to hold a public hearing in late September.

Comer then went through some top-line findings chronicled in three Oversight Committee memos describing more than $20 million in transfers from Chinese, Kazakhstani, Romanian, Russian and Ukrainian businesspeople to Hunter Biden and other Biden family members through their associates.

He also briefed the GOP conference on allegations of Justice Department misconduct in the Hunter Biden criminal investigation, which remains open after the collapse of plea negotiations on charges of tax fraud and lying on a gun purchase form.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and tax-focused Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) also spoke.

The handout for members revealed that the Judiciary Committee recently interviewed DC IRS special agent in charge Darrell Waldon about IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley’s claim that Delaware US Attorney David Weiss said he lacked decision-making power to bring charges, despite Attorney General Merrick Garland telling Congress otherwise.

“Waldon confirmed much of what Gary Shapley testified to before the Ways and Means Committee about the October 7, 2022, prosecution team meeting he attended just as he did at the time by responding to Shapley’s report and saying, ‘you covered it all,’” the handout says.

“While he did not recall certain aspects of the meeting, he could not identify a single factual inaccuracy with Mr. Shapley’s account of the meeting. He also confirmed that he did not raise any concerns about accuracy at the time and that he agreed with the IRS’s recommendation that felony charges should be pursued in the Hunter Biden case.”

Baltimore FBI special agent in charge Tom Sobocinski told the Judiciary Committee last week he couldn’t recall Weiss saying he lacked decision-making power.

Shapley says that Weiss was blocked from bringing charges against Hunter Biden in DC and Los Angeles by Joe Biden’s appointed US attorneys, resulting in a probation-only plea deal that Weiss approved in June before it fell apart under scrutiny by a federal judge.

Some House Republicans told reporters following the meeting that they weren’t sold yet on voting to impeach Biden, though a prominent Republican Capitol Hill aide told The Post that majority-party holdouts historically embrace that outcome as impeachment inquiries unfold, pointing to near-party line votes in recent proceedings.

Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), a past chairman of the Oversight Committee, said, “Until we have those bank records, until we have the information to the National Archives… you don’t want to basically say, ‘Well, we’re going to bring impeachment on this and then later on, we’re going to discover something.’ You want us to know all the facts and be deliberative about it.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) said of the Biden administration: “If everything was above board, show us the bank records, show us the credit card statements and all will be good, but that’s not what they’re going to do.”

“If you are selling out your country to Communist China, I don’t think you should be president, and anyone who says there’s no evidence just isn’t telling you the truth,” she added. “The text messages, the email messages, the phone calls, the meetings, the flights, all that is admissible in a court of law, and DOJ and FBI won’t do their job, and there’s clear evidence that they prevented this investigation.”

The impeachment update on Thursday was upstaged by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) daring critics such as Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) to file a motion to vacate and oust him from his post as fiscal hawks demand steep spending cuts ahead of a Sept. 30 government funding deadline.

McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry on Tuesday after Gaetz began agitating to potentially topple the speaker.

The sudden launch of the inquiry caught many Republicans flat-footed since the speaker said on Sept. 1 that he would hold a floor vote first to open the inquiry.

McCarthy cited evidence that Joe Biden was involved in nearly all of his relatives’ major foreign business relationships and said that the president has lied multiple times by claiming he “never” discussed business with his family when in fact he repeatedly dined, posed for photos, greeted in DC and abroad and spoke on the phone with his son and brother’s partners, according to documents from Hunter’s abandoned laptop, witness statements and other evidence.

“Through our investigations, we have found that President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings,” the speaker said.

“If this were a criminal investigation, and the president had made statements to the FBI or Department of Justice that were inaccurate the way he had, they probably would be charging him with perjury or false statements to government officials,” Issa acknowledged Thursday. “And they would have a case.”

The Constitution says that the House can impeach a president for “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors” and a decision on what qualifies is left up to members of Congress — with recent impeachments featuring charges such as Abuse of Power and Obstruction.