House Republicans Escalate Demands on Hunter Biden Documents
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(Bloomberg) -- House Republicans are insisting that a US Treasury Department official answer questions under oath next week about why the agency hasn’t turned over documents regarding President Joe Biden’s family.
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The demand signals a potential showdown over congressional access to so-called suspicious activity reports on foreign banking and other business transactions by Hunter Biden and other Biden relatives.
“We are done with the excuses and calling on Assistant Secretary Jonathan Davidson to answer questions under the penalty of perjury next week,” Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer said Tuesday night. “Biden’s Treasury Department’s obstruction will soon compel us to use the power of the gavel to obtain these documents.”
There was no immediate responses to requests for comment from both the Treasury and the White House over the demand that Davidson sit for a private interview on March 14.
Comer wants the reports — which are used by banks to flag what they deem dubiously large transactions — as part of his panel’s inquiries into the family’s overseas dealings. That investigation is just one of several into the Bidens that Republicans have either started or are planning since their party gained control of the House in January.
The demand for Davidson’s deposition comes after Comer and the committee previously wanted — and expected — him to testify at a public hearing on Friday. But he told the panel in a letter Monday that he wouldn’t appear, a committee spokesman said. That hearing is now scrapped.
In a Jan. 11 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Comer had requested all suspicious activity reports generated in connection to Hunter Biden, the president’s younger brother James Biden and his wife, Sara, as well as associates of Hunter Biden.
But Davidson responded in a letter last month to Comer that he needs more details about why the panel is seeking such “highly sensitive” information. Without acknowledging whether such reports on the Bidens exist, he also advised that “improper disclosure” of such information can undermine the executive branch’s “conduct of law enforcement, intelligence, and national security activities.”
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