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WASHINGTON ― Hunter Biden’s choice to not testify earlier than the Republican impeachment inquiry towards his father made Wednesday’s listening to remarkably uninteresting by current requirements.
Home Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) left a spot on the witness desk for the president’s son, holding out hope he would possibly change his RSVP.
“Maybe he will show up,” Comer mentioned in his opening remarks. “He has said he isn’t, but he loves saying one thing and doing another.”
However the chair remained empty for hours as Comer and his colleagues rehashed the identical corruption accusations they’ve levied towards President Joe Biden since final 12 months. Republicans have struggled to substantiate the allegations, and it seems unlikely Republicans will draft articles of impeachment towards the president.
“With any luck today marks the end of perhaps the most spectacular failure in the history of congressional investigations, the effort to find a high crime or misdemeanor committed by Joe Biden and then to impeach him for it,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the committee’s high Democrat, mentioned in a gap assertion.
The listening to noticed no main outbursts, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) determined to not deliver again her posters with compromising photos taken from Hunter Biden’s laptop computer, and Hunter Biden didn’t crash the proceedings like he did in January.
The largest accusation, which Comer, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and different Republicans raised on Wednesday, is that in 2015 Joe Biden used the vice presidency to get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired as a way to shield Burisma, a Ukrainian fuel firm that paid Hunter Biden thousands and thousands to serve on its board.
A number of State Division officers liable for U.S. coverage towards Ukraine have beforehand testified, throughout interviews with lawmakers in 2019 and 2020, that they wished the prosecutor fired as a result of he was corrupt ― partly as a result of he had refused to analyze alleged wrongdoing by Burisma’s proprietor ― and that Joe Biden had solely been doing his job.
Ignoring that testimony, Republicans have as an alternative pointed to an unverified tip from an FBI informant who claimed Burisma’s founder mentioned he bribed Joe Biden. However the Justice Division final month mentioned the informant had made all of it up and charged him with making false statements.
The principle Republican witness on Wednesday, nevertheless, was Tony Bobulinski, a businessman who briefly partnered with Hunter Biden on an ill-fated Chinese language funding deal. Bobulinski had nothing to do with Hunter Biden’s Burisma work however has been an outspoken critic of the Biden household. He’s additionally complained that Hunter Biden “defrauded” him.
“Joe Biden was more than a participant and beneficiary of his family business,” Bobulinski mentioned. “He was an active, aware enabler who met with business associates such as myself.”
Bobulinski described assembly Joe Biden in Might 2017 at a California lodge the place Biden delivered a most cancers “moonshot” speech. He mentioned he met Joe Biden in a lodge bar the night time earlier than the speech, and the 2 talked about their households and Bobulinski’s enterprise background. The following day, after the speech, Bobulinski mentioned he briefly talked to Biden once more.
“He thanked me for helping his son and brother, and asked me to keep an eye on them as I walked him out to his car,” Bobulinski mentioned.
Democrats beforehand identified, after Bobulinski associated his encounters with Joe Biden throughout a closed-door interview final month, that in line with Bobulinski’s personal description, his conversations with Joe Biden weren’t about enterprise. On Wednesday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) requested if he was saying he personally witnessed Biden commit against the law.
“I believe the fact that he was sitting with me while I was putting together a business deal,” Bobulinski mentioned, later suggesting Biden had violated corruption and racketeering legal guidelines.
“I have yet to hear in the chairman’s opening [statement] the allegation they are specifically charging the president of the United States with,” Ocasio-Cortez mentioned. “I am hearing about the Biden family, I’m hearing about this and that, I am not hearing the specific allegation by this committee. What is it?”
The witness Democrats invited on Wednesday, Lev Parnas, had beforehand labored with Rudy Giuliani and former president Donald Trump on their scheme to power Ukraine to announce its personal investigation towards the Bidens. That effort backfired, resulting in Trump’s first impeachment. Parnas wound up pleading responsible to marketing campaign finance violations and individually confessing to his function in digging up Ukrainian grime on the Bidens, a narrative he retold on Wednesday.
“In nearly a year traveling the world and interviewing officials in different countries, I found precisely zero evidence of the Bidens’ corruption in Ukraine,” Parnas mentioned.
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