Hunter Biden agrees to deposition before House Republicans in impeachment inquiry

WASHINGTON – Hunter Biden will sit for a deposition before a House panel on Feb. 28 as part of a Republican-led impeachment inquiry into his father, President Joe Biden.

The announcement comes after weeks of negotiations with Hunter Biden's attorneys. He has spent months resisting inquiries from Congressional Republicans, who have accused his father of profiting from his overseas business deals, which the White House has said is a baseless lie.

"We've done this the right way. We are in a position to win in court. If we weren't, he wouldn't be coming in to do this deposition," Oversight Chair James Comer told reporters Thursday. Hunter Biden will appear before the Oversight and the Judiciary Committees.

Comer said the committee will try to make the deposition transcript public as quickly as possible after the interview.

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House Republicans have alleged in their impeachment inquiry that Joe Biden personally and financially benefitted from his family's foreign business dealings but the probe has yet to produce evidence directly implicating the president.

The announcement comes after much back and forth between GOP investigators and Hunter Biden. The House Oversight Committee and House Judiciary Committee previously issued a subpoena to the younger Biden last year to testify behind closed doors, but the president’s son flouted the summons, and instead delivered remarks on Capitol Hill attacking the inquiry and defending his father.

Hunter Biden originally rejected the subpoena out of concerns Republicans would selectively leak the testimony’s transcript to misrepresent his statements, and demanded to testify in a public hearing. But Comer and Jordan said he could not dictate the terms of the subpoena and that Democrats would have disrupted a public hearing.

This time around, a person familiar with the discussions between committee staff and Hunter Biden’s attorneys said, the two parties are negotiating "a way for Hunter to provide the facts in a way that addresses his concern."

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Last week, the investigating committees announced they would mark up resolutions to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for defying the subpoena. The tensions between the two parties reached a new height after Hunter Biden made a surprise appearance at the hearing to discuss the contempt resolution.

Republicans were set to vote on the resolutions on the House floor this week, but ultimately put the plan on hold after Hunter Biden’s lawyers told the committees he was interested in testifying. During the week, investigators worked with his legal team to set a deposition date while GOP leadership held back the contempt resolutions.

Dig deeper: 'I have made mistakes': Defiant Hunter Biden lashes out at GOP and ignores subpoena

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Hunter Biden to testify to House Republicans in impeachment probe