WASHINGTON (CN) — A top Democrat on the GOP-led House committee investigating Hunter Biden’s business dealings accused his Republican colleagues Friday of concealing key evidence that pokes holes in the ongoing investigation into President Biden’s son.
In a scathing letter to House Oversight Committee chair Jim Comer, Maryland Congressman Jamie Raskin accused Republicans of withholding the transcript of the panel’s July 17 interview with a former FBI agent who was assigned to the agency’s investigation of Hunter Biden.
The interview, Raskin said, poured cold water on claims from Republican lawmakers that the Justice Department interfered U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ investigation into Biden’s business dealings. The special agent’s interview also provided additional context to testimony provided to the oversight committee July 19 by two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers.
That inconvenient evidence has intentionally been left under wraps for the last two weeks, the Maryland Democrat — who is the oversight committee’s ranking member — claimed.
“This failure to release a transcript is the latest in your troubling pattern of concealing key evidence in order to advance a false and distorted narrative about your ‘investigation of Joe Biden’ that has not only failed to develop any evidence of wrongdoing by President Biden but has, in fact, uncovered substantial evidence to the contrary,” Raskin told Comer.
The lawmaker also blasted Republicans' refusal to turn over a copy of a hard drive reportedly retrieved from Hunter Biden’s laptop which lawmakers have repeatedly cited in oversight panel hearings — a move which Raskin said “flies in the face of the committee’s traditional commitment to transparency” and renders the investigation illegitimate.
During the July 17 interview, the former FBI agent supported claims by U.S. Attorney Weiss that he had final authority to decide where and when to issue charges against Hunter Biden, Raskin wrote. The interviewee also shot down claims that disagreement between investigating agents and federal prosecutors was evidence of political interference, observing that such friction is routine and frequent in federal law enforcement.
“Last year, you vowed to conduct ‘a sober investigation’ if you became chair,” Raskin told Comer. “Instead, your investigation has been characterized throughout by active concealment of key evidence, the refusal to share committee information with the minority, a total lack of transparency … and a refusal to consider any facts in evidence that debunk your precooked theories.”
The oversight panel’s GOP majority fired back on social media Friday afternoon, saying that they had already sent Democrats the interview transcript and that they planned to release it after it had gone through “the normal review process.”
Republicans also doubled down, suggesting that the transcript would actually support their claims.
“To be clear, the former FBI Special Agent was interviewed by the Committee to offer independent verification of the events described in sworn testimony by the IRS whistleblowers,” Republicans wrote in a tweet from the oversight panel’s official account. “The transcript will show exactly that.”
House Republicans have expanded their probe into Hunter Biden in recent weeks, most notably with the July 19 whistleblower hearing during which two former IRS investigators accused Weiss of seeking approval from Biden-appointed prosecutors before moving forward with charges against Hunter Biden.
The hearing produced a particularly sordid episode involving Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene, who displayed sexually explicit images of the president’s son procured from the laptop hard drive that allegedly belonged to Hunter Biden. Greene’s conduct earned her a harsh rebuke from House Democrats and intervention from Hunter Biden’s lawyers, who demanded that the Office of Congressional Ethics investigate the affair.
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden faces two misdemeanor tax evasion charges and a separate charge for illegally purchasing a handgun — counts for which he had secured two separate plea deals aimed at keeping him out of prison. While he was set to plead guilty to those charges this week, a Trump-appointed judge in the District of Delaware pumped the brakes on the plan a Wednesday hearing, contending that the terms of the plea deal were unclear.
The White House has largely steered clear of controversy involving the president’s son, telling media last month that “the president and the first lady love their son.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Wednesday that Hunter Biden’s legal troubles are “a personal matter for him.”
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