Defiant Hunter Biden tells House panel he did not involve father in his business dealings
WASHINGTON
Hunter Biden appeared Wednesday on Capitol
Hill for a defiant, closeddoor deposition with lawmakers, a critical moment for Republicans as their impeachment inquiry into his father and the family’s business affairs teeters on the brink of collapse.
“I am here today to provide the committees with the one uncontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry: I did not involve my father in my business,” Hunter Biden said in an opening statement obtained by The Associated Press.
The deposition could mark a decisive point for the 14-month Republican investigation into the Biden family, which has centered on Hunter Biden and his overseas work for clients in Ukraine, China, Romania and other countries. Republicans have long questioned whether those business dealings involved corruption and influence peddling by President Joe Biden, particularly when he was vice president.
“We’re deposing Hunter Biden because he’s a key witness in our investigation of President Joe Biden,” Rep. James Comer, one of the Republican chairmen leading the inquiry, said.
Yet after conducting dozens of interviews and obtaining more than 100,000 pages of documents, Republicans have yet to produce direct evidence of misconduct by the president. Meanwhile, an FBI informant who alleged a bribery scheme involving the Bidens — a claim Republicans had cited repeatedly to justify their probe — is facing charges from federal prosecutors who accuse him of fabricating the story.
Despite the stakes of their investigation, it is unclear in the end how much useful information Republicans will be able to extract from Hunter Biden during the deposition. He is under federal investigation and has been indicted on nine federal tax charges and a firearm charge in Delaware, which means he could refuse to answer some questions by asserting his Fifth Amendment rights.
But by mid-day, Hunter Biden had not asserted those rights, according to Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., one of the members inside the deposition. Instead, Mace told reporters Wednesday that the president’s son had provided testimony in the first hour that was “defiant and dishonest.”
Democrats on the Oversight and Judiciary Committees came out during the break to call out what they called an “embarrassing spectacle where the Republicans continued to belabor completely trivial points.”
“Based on this first hour, this whole thing really has been a tremendous waste of our legislative time and the people’s resources,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight
Committee, said.
The task of interviewing Hunter falls primarily to Comer and Jim Jordan, the GOP chairmen leading the impeachment investigation.
Hunter is the second member of the Biden family questioned by Republicans in recent days. They conducted a more than eight-hour interview last week with James Biden, the president’s brother, who also insisted to lawmakers that Joe Biden has “never had any involvement,” financially or otherwise, in his business ventures.