GOP makes last-ditch request for Biden to testify in inquiry
WASHINGTON — The House impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden is all but winding down, lacking the political appetite from within the Republican ranks to go forward with an impeachment, but facing political pressure to deliver after months of work.
The chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Republican Rep. James Comer, made a last-ditch push at Wednesday’s hearing, announcing he will seek testimony from Biden himself, saying the Democratic president was either “complicit or incompetent” in his son Hunter Biden’s business dealings. It’s highly unlikely Biden would appear before the committee.
“We need to hear from the president himself,” Comer said at the close of the nearly eight-hour hearing.
The White House told Republicans to “move on” saying there are “real issues” Americans want to be addressed.
“This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment,” spokesperson Ian Sams said. “Call it a day, pal.”
Having produced with no hard evidence of presidential wrongdoing it’s clear the lengthy GOP impeachment inquiry is all but coming to a close. Seeking testimony from the president is a possible final act. Rather than drawing up articles of impeachment against Biden, Comer is eyeing potential criminal referrals of the family to the Justice Department, a largely symbolic move.
The committee’s top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said the Republicans have turned the investigation into a “laughing stock” and the “comedy of errors” of the Biden impeachment inquiry is finally “crashing to an end.”
Republicans launched their early investigations into the president after taking control of the House last year, eager to hold Biden to the high bar of impeachment. The House, under a Democratic majority, had twice impeached Republican Donald Trump during his presidency.
As Trump and Biden face another likely rematch this November, the probe is grinding on drilling into Hunter Biden’s often complicated business dealings and troubled personal life, particularly when Joe Biden was vice president or out of public office.
The committee asserts the Bidens traded on the family name, an alleged influence-peddling scheme in which Republicans are trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or out of office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates.
Hunter Biden, who is facing firearm and tax charges in separate matters, testified behind closed doors last month in a deposition that filled more than 200 pages but left Comer’s committee without evidence rising to “high crimes and misdemeanors” that would be expected to impeach a president.
“My father’s never been involved with my business,” Hunter Biden testified.
It would be rare but not unprecedented for a president to appear before Congress. Abraham Lincoln spoke privately to the House Judiciary Committee about a leaked speech and Gerald Ford appeared about his pardon of former president Richard M. Nixon, among others.
Wednesday’s testimony came from a cast of unusual witnesses, some with complicated backgrounds.
Jason Galanis is serving a lengthy federal prison sentence in Alabama for fraud schemes and appeared remotely before lawmakers. Tony Bobulinski, a onetime business associate of Hunter Biden, took his claims against the family public during the first TrumpBiden presidential debate in 2020.
The Democrats called Lev Parnas to testify, relying on the convicted businessman who was central to Trump’s first impeachment as a Rudy Giuliani associate working to dig up political dirt on Joe Biden before the 2020 election. Parnas has since played a key role in dispelling the House GOP’s main claim of bribery against the Bidens.
Testifying via video, Galanis told lawmakers he expected to make “billions” with Hunter Biden and other associates, using the Biden family name in their foreign business dealings.
Galanis described a particular time in May 2014 when Hunter Biden put his father on speakerphone for a brief chat with potential foreign business partners — a Russian oligarch and her husband — during a party at a New York restaurant.
But Hunter Biden directly rebuffed involvement with Galanis in his own deposition, testifying that he met Galanis for about 30 minutes 10 years ago.
In earlier testimony, Galanis, who was sentenced for multiple fraud schemes, acknowledged that he unsuccessfully sought a pardon in the final days of the Trump presidency.
Bobulinski told the committee he met twice with Joe Biden in 2017 during a conference in Los Angeles, through Hunter Biden, including once for about 45 minutes, when they talked mostly about family and did not talk business.