Scoring on long 'bank' $hot
14 yrs. of records in Hunter probe
WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer issued a sweeping subpoena for 14 years of bank records linked to three people in the panel’s investigation of the Hunter Biden’s foreign-business dealings, the top Democrat on the committee disclosed Monday.
Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) fired off a bitter protest letter denouncing the subpoena, which he said was issued by Comer (R-Ky.) to Bank of America on Feb. 27 seeking records beginning when Joe Biden became vice president.
“The subpoena you issued, after giving committee Democrats mere hours of notice despite long-standing committee practice of providing at least 48-hour notice, required Bank of America to produce ‘all financial records’ for three private individuals from Jan. 20, 2009, to the present — a staggering 14year period,” Raskin revealed.
Raskin indicated the three account holders were “business associates” of Hunter and first brother James Biden in a venture with CEFC China Energy, including John “Rob” Walker.
“To justify this roving congressional inquisition into the affairs of at least one private American citizen, you have offered that, ‘[b]y 2017, Biden family members and their associates, including John R. Walker, formed a joint venture with CEFC China executives,’ ” Raskin wrote. “Despite this limited justification, you compelled the production of and obtained thousands of pages of Mr. Walker’s private financial information, including statements of his and his wife’s joint checking account for a decade.”
Dems’ objections
“These documents go well beyond any business deal with Hunter Biden or CEFC,” Raskin wrote. “I fear this wildly overbroad subpoena suggests that your interest in this investigation is not in pursuing defined facts or informing public legislation but conducting a dragnet of political opposition research on behalf of former President [Donald] Trump.”
Comer’s office played coy about what it got back from Bank of America and would not immediately confirm to The Post the names of people whose records were subpoenaed.
“The Oversight Committee has subpoenaed and obtained financial records related to the Biden family’s influence peddling,” a committee spokesperson said. “These documents solidify our understanding of several areas of concern and have opened new avenues of investigation about the Biden family’s business schemes.”
Comer also is seeking from the Treasury Department suspicious-activity reports on Biden family transactions — as well as sales records for artworks sold, supposedly to anonymous buyers, by Hunter Biden through a Manhattan gallery.
House investigators are trying, in part, to determine President Biden’s role in his family’s foreign enterprises — saying that they create conflicts of interest for US foreign policy and could amount to corruption.
Eyes on Delaware
Hunter Bidden is under federal investigationn by the US attorney’s office in Delaware for possible tax fraud, illegal foreign lobbying and other crimes.
The first son wrote in communications retrieved from his abandoned laptop that he paid as much as “half ” of hiss income to his father.
A 2017 email described 10% of the CEFC China Energy deal being held foor the “big guy.”
Two former Hunter Biden busineess associates,
Tony Bobulinski and James Gilliar, have identified Joe Biden as the “big guy” in the CEFC deal, which Comer targeted, according to Raskin.
Hunter and James Biden ultimately earned $4.8 million from CEFC, which was a reputed cog in Beijing’s “Belt and Road” foreign-influence campaign, in 2017 and 2018, according to The Washington Post’s review of Hunter Biden laptop documents.
Republicans have accused Biden of being too soft on China on issues such as determining the origins of COVID-19, which killed more than 1 million Americans, and stopping fentanyl exports, which killed about 196,000 Americans in
2018-2021 alone.