Comer warns White House about “hostility” towards Biden impeachment

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) criticized the White House on Wednesday for refusing to respond to the committee’s requests related to the Republican-led impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Comer reiterated his demands in a letter to White House counsel Richard Sauber, asking that Sauber notify him by next week if the White House does not plan to cooperate “so that the Committee may act accordingly,” Comer wrote. The chairman did not specify what steps he would take next.

Comer had asked the White House last month to provide a slate of information, such as details about Biden’s interactions with foreign executives with whom the president’s son and brother, Hunter and James, engaged in business dealings.

The Kentucky Republican accused Joe Biden of obstructing congressional oversight efforts and suggested the president was committing “impeachable offenses” by that act alone.

“The Committee has demonstrated Joe Biden has placed his family’s wealth over his country’s interests, and the White House’s continued hostility towards Congress’s prerogative to investigate these matters constitutes obstruction and contempt of Congress—which are themselves impeachable offenses,” Comer wrote.

Comer also said the White House is blocking the National Archives and Records Administration from providing certain substantive documents, including unredacted emails in which Joe Biden used email aliases when he was vice president to communicate with Hunter Biden’s business partners, as well as all drafts of a speech Joe Biden delivered to the Ukrainian Rada in 2015. During that speech, the then-vice president called for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor whose work included investigating an energy company that Hunter Biden made millions of dollars working for as a board member.

A senior Democratic aide pointed out that NARA has worked in “good faith” with the committee and tripled its staffing to cooperate with Congress. The agency has provided more than 20,000 documents related to the Biden family, the aide said.

Comer noted in his letter that NARA’s productions have included “reams of junk emails.”

Comer’s letter comes after Sauber wrote to him on Monday to assert that the “impeachment investigation is over.” Sauber cited a fundraising email, reported by CNN, showing Comer stating that the impeachment inquiry would end with criminal referrals, rather than a vote to impeach the president.

“Your Committee’s purported ‘impeachment inquiry’ has succeeded only in turning up abundant evidence that, in fact, the President has done nothing wrong,” Sauber wrote.

On the whole, House Republicans have shown little interest in holding a vote to impeach Joe Biden. Comer has showcased over the past several months how Hunter and James Biden made millions of dollars working abroad, including with adversarial countries such as China, and at times by wielding Joe Biden’s influence. However, the chairman has not conclusively demonstrated that the president himself committed wrongdoings to help himself or his family profit.

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Comer told Sauber the inquiry is not over and that the executive branch has no authority to declare otherwise.

“The White House’s view of the merits or status of the impeachment inquiry is … irrelevant to the House’s exercise of its constitutional authorities in this investigation,” Comer wrote.