House Republicans request Joe Biden’s testimony on corruption allegations during impeachment hearing

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee formally invited President Joe Biden to testify for their ongoing impeachment inquiry in a 7-page letter on Thursday.

“The Committee has identified and successfully traced money from foreign transactions — including from China — to your own bank accounts,” wrote Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Kentucky. “In addition to requesting that you answer the questions posed in this letter, I invite you to participate in a public hearing at which you will be afforded the opportunity to explain, under oath, your involvement with your family’s sources of income and the means it has used to generate it.”

Comer’s letter outlined investigators’ case against the president. It identifies $24 million from “foreign sources” as flowing to Biden, his family, and associates for “no legitimate services” provided.

“[T[he White House has taken a position hostile to the Committee’s investigation and refuses to release certain information or make available witnesses to testify regarding issues relevant to the ongoing impeachment inquiry,” Comer noted.

Last week, lawmakers heard from a pair of former Biden family business partners who accused the president of trading political influence for foreign gifts. The influence peddling schemes, they said, were run primarily by the president’s son, Hunter, who was invited but refused to appear under oath despite a congressional subpoena. House investigators heard from former business partners Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis instead at the public hearing.

“I want to be crystal clear: from my direct personal experience and what I have subsequently come to learn, it is clear to me that Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ being sold by the Biden family,” said Bobulinski. “His family’s foreign influence peddling operation — from China to Ukraine and elsewhere — sold out to foreign actors who were seeking to gain influence and access to Joe Biden and the United States government.”

The letter from Comer on Thursday traced suspicious payments from China, Russia, and Ukraine, with questions related to the foreign transactions under each.

“You have asserted your family has not made money from China,” Comer wrote. “However, the Committee has identified approximately $10 million originating from China connected to Biden influence peddling.”

The chairman raised questions related to a series of payments from business leaders tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Days before the end of the 2020 election season, Bobulinki claimed the Biden family business ran so deep in China that the Democrat candidate for president was “compromised” by Beijing.

Another primary area of inquiry by congressional investigators is a $3.5 million payment from Yelena Baturina, the widow of an ex-Moscow mayor.

“In February 2014, the richest woman in Russia paid into your son and his business associate’s company $3.5 million days before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, in an apparent attempt to avoid U.S. sanctions on Russian bank accounts,” Comer wrote. “To date, the Russian oligarch has not been subject to any public sanctions.”

Comer also summarized the Biden family’s scandalous arrangement in Ukraine, wherein Hunter raked in millions from an energy company despite no prior experience in the industry while Joe Biden was vice president. During that time, Biden, who dictated White House policy towards Ukraine, demanded Ukrainian authorities fire a prosecutor who was investigating his son’s energy firm.

[READ: Evidence Of Biden Burisma Corruption Is Overwhelming]

The chairman of the House Oversight Committee said earlier this month that lawmakers would most likely be making criminal referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ).

2024-03-28 – CJC Letter to JRB by The Federalist