(Headline USA) Hunter Biden has agreed to appear before House Republicans for a private deposition next month, ending months of defiance from the president’s son, who had insisted on testifying publicly.
The House Oversight Committee announced Thursday that the two parties have agreed for Hunter Biden to sit for a deposition on Feb. 28.
“The president’s son is a key witness in this investigation and he’s gonna be able to come in now and sit down and answer questions in a substantive, orderly manner,” Rep. James Comer, chair of the Oversight Committee, told reporters. Comer added that Hunter Biden will be able to testify publicly sometime after his deposition.
News of the agreement was confirmed by Hunter Biden’s legal team Thursday night. Republicans had been set to advance a contempt of Congress resolution against him to the House floor this week but called it off Tuesday to give the attorneys additional time to negotiate.
As legal scholar Jonathan Turley speculated in a blog post Thursday, the upper hand likely goes once again to President Joe Biden’s degenerate son, who managed to secure a concession by averting the contempt charge after twice openly making a mockery of the proceedings: once by defying a subpoena, and later by disrupting the hearing to present himself at an unwelcome moment.
Forcing the legislative body to act on his terms, Turley noted, was evocative of the 53-year-old recovering drug-addict’s previous demands on a journalist, who was rebuffed when asking him a challenging question by his insistence that she “say it nicer to me.”
While it is likely that Hunter’s testimony will amount to little more than him pleading the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination, Comer is hoping to continue building his methodical case for impeachment, with the clock ticking ahead of the November election, and given 81-year-old President Joe Biden’s advanced age.
If they had voted on the contempt resolution, the referral would have been sent to the Justice Department where the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia would have had to decide whether to prosecute Hunter Biden.
Given the Justice Department’s long history of running interference for the Biden family—and Hunter in particular—it is highly unlikely that it would have done so under the circumstances, creating something of a minor constitutional crisis with the erratic and unstable Hunter at its center.
“There is no fairness or decency in what these Republicans are doing,” the president’s son said in remarks outside the Capitol in December. “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.”
But Hunter Biden and his legal team appeared to shift gears late last week when they sent a letter to Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, indicating a willingness for the first time to come in for a private deposition.
Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s attorney, wrote in a letter Friday that his client’s cooperation is dependent on the committee issuing a new subpoena, which they will now do given the updated deposition date. They had argued that the two subpoenas sent in last year were not legitimate because they were issued before the full House authorized the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
The impeachment inquiry into the president, which began in September, has focused heavily on Hunter Biden and his international business affairs, questioning whether the president profited from that work.
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last month, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over three years.
He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
