Hunter Biden Shows Up On Capitol Hill, Defies Subpoena, Denounces GOP ‘Lies’
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WASHINGTON ― Hunter Biden paid a surprise visit to Capitol Hill on Wednesday and made a public statement denying Republican accusations that his father was involved in his business.
“My father was not financially involved in my business,” Biden said, adding that Republicans had “no evidence” to support their impeachment inquiry against his father, President Joe Biden.
Hunter Biden spoke to reporters outside the U.S. Senate, defying a subpoena from House Republicans who had demanded he sit for a closed-door deposition on Wednesday.
Instead, Hunter Biden repeated his offer to answer Republican questions in a public hearing ― and he denounced Republicans’ investigation, which has scoured the contents of his laptop and his bank accounts.
“There is no fairness or decency in what these Republicans are doing. They have lied over and over about every aspect of my personal and professional life, so much so that their lies have become the false facts believed by too many people,” he said, in an apparent reference to polling that shows majorities of Americans suspect the president was involved in his son’s business.
So far, despite years of searching, Republicans haven’t shown a connection between the president and his son’s work with foreign nationals in Ukraine and China. They have claimed that payments from Hunter Biden to his father show the president benefiting from his son’s foreign business deals, for example, even though the transfers appear to be reimbursements for truck payments.
Hunter Biden admitted that he was “extremely irresponsible” with his finances when he was in the depths of his addictions to alcohol and crack cocaine. He faces criminal charges for tax and gun crimes from 2016 to 2019. He noted that Republicans have ridiculed his struggle with addiction.
“They displayed naked photos of me during an oversight hearing, and they have taken the light of my dad’s love ― the light of my dad’s love for me ― and presented it as darkness,” he said. “They have no shame.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) displayed compromising photos of Hunter Biden during a hearing in July, claiming Biden had committed a crime by paying for escorts to cross state lines.
During a gaggle with reporters outside of the Oversight Committee’s hearing room on Wednesday, where Republicans had demanded Hunter Biden testify, House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) denied they’d ever mocked his addiction. Greene, standing beside them, did not speak up.
Jordan said the fact that Biden specified his father was not “financially” involved in his business was essentially an admission that Joe Biden has, in fact, been involved in the business. Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden’s, told lawmakers earlier this year that the two Bidens would speak on the phone every day and that Hunter Biden would occasionally put his father on speaker in the company of their business associates.
“That is a huge departure from everything they’ve said,” Jordan said.
Comer has said Republicans would pursue contempt of Congress proceedings if Hunter Biden refused to sit for a private interview, but the threat has apparently failed to compel Biden’s testimony. Comer said Wednesday that Republicans would initiate the proceedings and could take action sometime after the holidays.
If the House votes to hold Biden in contempt, the vote would result in a referral to the Justice Department for prosecution, though there’s a tradition of the DOJ ignoring such referrals depending on the political party of the target.
The House is expected to vote later on Wednesday to formally authorize its impeachment inquiry against the president.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
