By FARNOUSH AMIRI (Associated Press)
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Wednesday opened their long-promised investigation into President Joe Biden and his household, wielding the facility of their new majority to demand info from the Treasury Department and former Twitter executives as they laid the groundwork for public hearings.
“Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming,” Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, stated in a press release.
The Republican-led committee despatched a sequence of letters requesting monetary info from the Treasury Department about monetary transactions by members of the Biden household that had been flagged as suspicious exercise. Those studies are routine, with bigger monetary transactions routinely flagged to the federal government, and should not proof on their very own of misconduct.
Lawmakers additionally requested testimony from a number of former Twitter executives who had been concerned within the firm’s dealing with of an October 2020 story from the New York Post about Hunter Biden, the president’s youthful son. Republicans say that story was suppressed for political causes.
Moving shortly after taking management of the House, Republicans are establishing a messy, politically explosive showdown with the White House that might delve deeply into the affairs of the president’s household and form the contours of the 2024 race for the White House.
“In their first week as a governing majority, House Republicans have not taken any meaningful action to address inflation and lower Americans’ costs, yet they’re jumping out of the gate with political stunts driven by the most extreme MAGA members of their caucus in an effort to get attention on Fox News,” Ian Sams, a White House spokesman, stated in a press release, referring to former President Donald Trump’s marketing campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.
In a press release, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, the senior Democrat on Oversight, echoed the White House sentiment, saying Democrats will work with Republicans “when they get serious about tackling problems that affect the American people.”
The Treasury Department declined to remark.
Comer and different Republicans set out their plan for probing the Biden household the day after clinching a slim majority within the November midterm elections. The Kentucky Republican advised reporters there are “troubling questions,” particularly concerning the enterprise dealings of Hunter Biden and one of many president’s brothers, James Biden, that require deeper investigation.
GOP investigations into the Biden household are nothing new. Republican lawmakers and their employees have been analyzing messages and monetary transactions discovered on a laptop computer that belonged to Hunter Biden for the previous yr. Comer advised reporters late Wednesday that he’s been in contact with GOP Sens. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who led the investigative efforts in opposition to Hunter Biden within the Senate, and there may be info sharing between the 2 chambers.
But Republicans now have subpoena energy within the House, giving them the authority to compel testimony and conduct a much more aggressive investigation.
Republicans have mentioned issuing congressional subpoenas to overseas entities that did enterprise with Hunter Biden, and so they lately introduced on James Mandolfo, a former federal prosecutor, to help with the investigation as common counsel for the Oversight panel.
Hunter Biden’s taxes and overseas enterprise work are already underneath federal investigation, with a grand jury in Delaware listening to testimony in current months. While he by no means held a place on the presidential marketing campaign or within the White House, his membership on the board of a Ukrainian vitality firm and his efforts to strike offers in China have lengthy raised questions on whether or not he traded on his father’s public service, together with reported references in his emails to the “big guy.”
Joe Biden has stated he’s by no means spoken to his son about his overseas enterprise. And there aren’t any indications that the federal investigation entails the president in any method.
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Associated Press writers Zeke Miller, Fatima Hussein and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.
Source: www.bostonherald.com”
