Hunter Biden should be held in contempt, House panel recommends
Two U.S. House committees recommended Wednesday that Hunter Biden be held in criminal contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a subpoena in the impeachment inquiry into his father, President Joe Biden.
The votes, 23-14 in the Judiciary Committee and 25-21 in the Oversight Committee, came after Hunter Biden made an unannounced appearance on the U.S. Capitol grounds to attend the proceedings.
Once approved, the measures will go to the full House to vote on whether to ask the Justice Department to prosecute the younger Biden for defying his congressional subpoena.
The most dramatic moment of the day came early on when the president’s son, accompanied by his lawyer Abbe Lowell, entered the Oversight hearing room. The move, which caught Republican lawmakers off guard, highlighted Hunter Biden’s aggressive tactics to counter House investigations into his business practices.
With the president’s son sitting in a chair typically reserved for the public, Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina asked “Who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today?” She called Biden’s appearance “the epitome of White privilege” and questioned his manhood for refusing to testify to the panel behind closed doors.
The two committees last month subpoenaed Hunter Biden to appear for a closed-door deposition. He came to Capitol Hill that time as well but said he would only testify in public.
“I think that Hunter Biden should be arrested right here, right now, and go straight to jail,” Mace said.
Democrats, and some Republicans, urged calm as Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer struggled to regain control of the hearing. Representative Andy Biggs, an Arizona Republican, called for “decorum and courtesy” and said people in the room should not “act like a bunch of nimrods.”
Representative Jared Moskowitz of Florida, a Democrat, responded by asking Republicans if they would allow Biden to speak publicly at the hearing. He received a chilly reception from GOP lawmakers when he asked them to raise their hands if they supported the idea.
Biden and Lowell left several minutes into the hearing, prompting Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, to criticize the president’s son for being “smug” and avoiding committee oversight.
Lowell afterward raised his previous offer for Hunter Biden to testify publicly to Congress, rather than give a private deposition.
“The Republican chairs today then are commandeering an unprecedented resolution to hold someone in contempt, who has offered to publicly answer all their proper questions. The question there is, what are they afraid of?” Lowell told reporters after leaving the hearing room.
Back inside, Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the Oversight panel’s top Democrat, rebuked Greene for previously showing sexually explicit pictures of the president’s son in the committee room.
Hunter Biden is facing two federal indictments. One accuses him of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes owed between 2016 and 2019 and allegedly filing false returns in 2018. According to that indictment, he spent millions of dollars on a drugfueled life featuring escorts, fast cars and luxury hotels, much of it while he was in the grips of addiction.
The other indictment accuses him of lying about his drug use on a federal form he had to fill out to purchase a handgun.
Democrats unsuccessfully challenged an effort by Greene of Georgia to place into the record alleged partly redacted nude photos of Hunter Biden.
A lawyer by training, the younger Biden pursued business opportunities with foreign companies and individuals after his father became vice president in 2009, sometimes in ways that intersected with his father’s work.
Hunter Biden is scheduled to appear Thursday in a Los Angeles court to respond to the tax charges, court records show. He could face as many as 17 years in prison.