House Republicans will hold their second public impeachment inquiry hearing on Wednesday as they press forward with examining whether Joe Biden used his political influence as vice president to help his family profit.
The House Oversight Committee will host the hearing, titled “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office,” at 10 a.m. on Capitol Hill.
The Bidens “do not work as consultants or lawyers or advisers. The Bidens don’t sell a product or a service or a set of skills. The Bidens sell Joe Biden,” Chairman James Comer (R-KY) plans to say at the hearing, according to excerpts of his opening remarks obtained by the Washington Examiner.
“The scam is simple. The Biden family promises they can make a foreign partner’s problems go away by engaging the U.S. government,” Comer will say.
Committee Republicans invited four witnesses to appear at the hearing, but two of them, Hunter Biden and his former business partner Devon Archer, declined to attend. The other two, Jason Galanis and Tony Bobulinski, both plan to testify. Galanis, who is serving out a 14-year prison sentence in Alabama, will appear virtually from his detention facility. Galanis and Bobulinski both previously worked with Hunter Biden.
Committee Democrats invited Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani, to appear as their witness, according to a source for the Democrats. Parnas, who was convicted in 2021 of campaign finance and false statement violations, had worked with Giuliani ahead of the 2020 presidential election to unearth any Biden family interference in Ukrainian politics. He later expressed regret for doing it in a letter to Congress and claimed the impeachment inquiry had “no merit.”
A spokesperson for committee Republicans said in a statement that Democrats “are relying on a convicted liar who claims Joe Biden never met with a Burisma official when in fact he dined with one.”
Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD), who has been tasked with countering Republicans’ impeachment narratives since the inquiry’s inception six months ago, claimed Parnas will “debunk” the inquiry.
“Lev Parnas can debunk the bogus claims at the heart of the impeachment probe and, in the process, explain how the GOP ended up in this degraded and embarrassing place,” Raskin said.
Republicans had invited Hunter Biden to attend the hearing, but the first son declined. His attorney said in a letter to Comer the hearing was an “attempt to resuscitate” House Republicans’ “moribund inquiry with a made-for-right-wing-media, circus act.”
Hunter Biden originally told the committee he would only appear for a public hearing after Comer had subpoenaed him to appear for a closed-door deposition. The first son initially resisted appearing behind closed doors, arguing Republicans would publicly mischaracterize the interview. He eventually relented, however, when faced with the prospect of being held in contempt of Congress and appeared last month for the deposition. He then reneged on his offer to appear publicly when Comer invited him to Wednesday’s hearing.
Oversight Republicans plan to keep a seat at the witness table on Wednesday labeled with Hunter Biden’s name to showcase his absence, according to a source familiar with the plans.
The source said Republicans are expected to ask questions during the hearing to address inconsistencies they have observed in various interviews they have already had with witnesses, including Hunter Biden, the president’s brother James Biden, Archer, Bobulinski, Galanis, and other Biden family business partners, such as Eric Schwerin and Rob Walker.
They plan to disprove Joe Biden’s initial claim in 2019 that he “never discussed” business with his son, the source said. As evidence emerged showing Joe Biden had been on phone calls and present at meetings with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates, the White House’s tune shifted slightly over the years.
“As we have said many times before, the president was not in business with his son,” White House spokesman Ian Sams said in June last year.
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There is little indication at this stage that the inquiry will lead to a vote to impeach Joe Biden because Republicans have turned up scant evidence that the president definitively engaged in or profited from the business pursuits of his family members despite their findings that the president had at least a tangential presence for some of them.
Comer has said the inquiry could still also lead to legislative reforms or criminal referrals, rather than an impeachment vote.
