Hunter Biden ducks House interview under threat of contempt, insists Joe not ‘financially involved’ in foreign biz
WASHINGTON — First son Hunter Biden insisted Wednesday that his father Joe was not “financially involved” in his foreign business pursuits — skipping a transcribed interview with the House Oversight Committee under the threat of being held in contempt in favor of a shameless plea for public sympathy outside the Capitol.
“For six years, I’ve been the target of the unrelenting Trump attack machine shouting, ‘Where’s Hunter?’ Well, here’s my answer, ‘I am here,’” said the younger Biden, 53.
“Let me state as clearly as I can: my father was not financially involved in my business, not as a practicing lawyer, not as a board member of Burisma, not in my partnership with a Chinese private businessman, not in my investments at home nor abroad, and certainly not as an artist.”
President Biden’s son had received a subpoena to be interviewed by the Oversight Committee behind closed doors at 9:30 a.m. Instead, he began his surprise 5-minute speech about 10 minutes later.
House Republicans said that Hunter’s decision propelled Wednesday evening’s vote to formally authorize an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden’s role in his son and brother’s foreign dealings.
Hunter Biden’s legal team, led by high-powered attorney Abbe Lowell, repeatedly sought a public hearing where House Democrats could grandstand, rather than an initial closed-door deposition in which committee members and attorneys would ask questions.
“I’m here to testify at a public hearing today to answer any of the committee’s legitimate questions,” Hunter claimed, saying Republicans had “impugned my character” and “invaded my privacy.”
The first son, who took no questions from the press, repeatedly insisted that his father was not “financially involved” in his dealings — rather than claiming he had no role at all.
Evidence shows Joe Biden met with his son’s associates from two Chinese business deals and others from Mexico, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine, contradicting the president’s repeated claims that he never even discussed business with his relatives. Many of those meetings occurred during Biden’s vice presidency when he steered US foreign policy toward those countries.
“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, and hear what I have to say,” said Hunter, who faces federal tax and weapons charges in California and Delaware.
“What are they afraid of?” the first son went on. “I’m here. I’m ready.”
Hunter also claimed congressional Republicans had “distorted facts.”
“In the depths of my addiction, I was extremely irresponsible with my finances. But to suggest that is grounds for impeachment inquiry is beyond absurd,” he said.
Hunter added that congressional Republicans were “cherry-picking lines from a bank statement, manipulating texts I sent, editing the testimony of my friend and former business partner, and misstating personal information that was stolen from me.”
Republicans in charge of the impeachment inquiry were unimpressed by the display.
House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said his panel “issued a lawful subpoena to the president’s son” and that “we expect to depose the president’s son and then we will be more than happy to have a public hearing with him.”
“The president hasn’t been honest about his associations with these people who have been wiring millions and millions of dollars to Hunter Biden and the Biden family,” he said.
House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) told reporters: “If you do it in an open format now, you’re gonna get filibusters, you’re gonna get speeches, you’re gonna get all kinds of things. What we want is the facts.”
“Mr. Biden’s counsel and the White House and both argue that the reason he couldn’t come for a deposition was because there wasn’t a formal vote for an impeachment inquiry,” Jordan added. “And that’s going to happen in a few hours.”
Jordan went on to note that Donald Trump Jr. “had to testify twice” behind closed doors during investigations into his father.
“You have a right to assert your Fifth Amendment right,” Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) told The Post. “If Hunter Biden is guilty of as many crimes as we think he is, if he doesn’t want to answer questions about his business relationship with his father, which we now know exists — he will do so.
“But it’s taken a long time to get him here, when in fact, what he really wanted was to make public statements and then never answer the questions… Our expectations of honest and forthright answers from Hunter Biden are as low as they are from the White House.”
Issa added if reports were true that Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) reserved the outdoor space for Hunter Biden to deliver his speech, then the California Democrat had committed “at minimum an ethics violation.”
“If it’s true that he did it, then he has acted to aid and abet somebody fleeing the jurisdiction of the body that compelled him. Eric is a member of the committee. He’s aware of it, and I hope it’s not true,” he said.
Republicans speculated that Hunter spoke on the Senate side of the Capitol complex to avoid the possibility, however unlikely, of being arrested on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s orders and hauled before the committee.
“I think it was very telling, just the fact that he wouldn’t cross over into the House side of the Capitol,” Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) told The Post. “If he had, the Sergeant at Arms could have arrested him and made him come and be in front of the committee.”
Democrats lined up to defend the Bidens, with Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, saying Joe Biden couldn’t be more innocent — even as Republicans allege some foreign funds may have gone to Joe Biden, in addition to his meetings with foreign associates.
“President Biden has done nothing wrong. They have not laid a glove on President Biden and they have no evidence of him committing any offense, much less an impeachable offense,” Raskin said after Hunter’s speech.
Republicans and legal experts have floated articles of impeachment against Biden for offenses including abuse of power, obstruction of Congress, and even bribery.
“The courts have repeatedly found that benefits to family members (far more modest than the millions in this case) can constitute bribery for a politician. That has also been the position of the Justice Department in past cases,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley wrote in a recent column.
Skipping the deposition could add to Hunter Biden’s own legal concerns.
Witnesses who refuse to comply with congressional subpoenas can be prosecuted — though Hunter would have to be charged by his own father’s Justice Department after a referral vote by the House.
Steve Bannon, former chief strategist to President Donald Trump, was sentenced last year to four months in prison for refusing to comply with a subpoena issued by the House select committee that investigated the 2021 Capitol riot. Peter Navarro, another former Trump adviser, was similarly convicted in September and is awaiting sentencing.
Hunter already faces criminal indictments on tax fraud out of Los Angeles and on illegal gun possession in Wilmington after he walked away from a probation-only plea deal in July over his courtroom demand for assurances that he would have immunity from other possible charges, such as potential Foreign Agents Registration Act counts that could implicate his father.
IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who worked on a five-year investigation of Hunter’s foreign income, came forward as whistleblowers this year and alleged the probe had been slow-walked and that they had been prevented from investigating Joe Biden’s role in business dealings, even when communications directly implicated the elder Biden.
In a July 2017 text message, Hunter Biden allegedly threatened a China-based associate with his father’s revenge, adding he was “sitting here” with his dad. Within 10 days, $5.1 million flowed from the Chinese state-linked company to accounts associated with Hunter and first brother James Biden.
As part of the same deal, Joe Biden, who had recently left office as vice president, was at one point penciled in for a 10% cut by Hunter’s partners, according to a May 2017 email.
In an earlier Chinese business deal, then-Vice President Joe Biden brought Hunter to China aboard Air Force Two in late 2013 and met for coffee with the incoming CEO of state-backed investment fund BHR Partners, which was co-founded by the then-second son within two weeks of the trip.
Hunter Biden put Joe Biden on speakerphone with Li during a subsequent business trip to China, former Biden family business associate Devon Archer testified to the Oversight Committee on July 31.
Joe Biden also wrote college recommendation letters for Li’s children.
Hunter Biden held a 10% stake in BHR through at least part of his father’s first year as president and the terms of his divestment remain murky.
In 2015, Joe Biden hosted billionaire Carlos Slim and members of the wealthy Mexican Aleman family, whom Hunter Biden courted with energy and technology pitches, at the official vice president’s residence in Washington.
Archer told the Oversight Committee that Hunter put his father on speakerphone during roughly 20 business meetings with foreign associates and that Joe Biden attended two dinners at DC’s Cafe Milano in 2014 and 2015 with his son’s Kazakhstani, Russian, and Ukrainian patrons.
The then-vice president’s dining partners included former Moscow first lady Yelena Baturina, who transferred $3.5 million to a Hunter Biden-associated entity in 2014, Kenes Rakishev, who purchased the then-second son a $142,000 sports car, and Vadym Pozharsky, board adviser to Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings, which paid Hunter up to $1 million per year beginning in 2014 when his father assumed control of US policy toward Ukraine.
