(Headline USA) James Biden will appear before House Republicans for a private interview next month as lawmakers continue their monthslong impeachment inquiry into his brother, President Joe Biden.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee announced on Wednesday that the Democratic president’s younger sibling will come to Capitol Hill on Feb. 21. The date was set after months of negotiations between the sides.
“We look forward to his interview,” the committee tweeted.
James Biden’s interview will take place just days before the president’s son Hunter Biden will be deposed in private by the committee, which has been investigating the Biden family’s overseas finances for the past year.
Both James and Hunter Biden were subpoenaed by the committee in November.
A lawyer for James Biden insisted at the time that there was no justification for the subpoena because the committee had already reviewed private bank records and transactions between the two brothers.
At least 150 of the Biden family’s financial records were flagged as suspicious transactions by the banks that processed them.
Among them, the committee found records of two direct payments James made to Joe Biden when the latter was not in office or a candidate for president.
One $200,000 payment to Joe Biden came on the exact same day that James received a $200,000 loan from a failing hospital-management company.
🚨 BREAKING 🚨
We have found a $200,000 DIRECT payment to Joe Biden.
@RepJamesComer lays out the money trail. 👇 pic.twitter.com/0vq3lqhRHz— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) October 20, 2023
Another check, for $40,000, came shortly after a Chinese energy company paid Hunter $400,000 in a deal that also involved James—effectively making good on a promise to remit 10% to the “big guy.”
“There is nothing more to those transactions, and there is nothing wrong with them,” lawyer Paul Fishman said in a statement in November. “And Jim Biden has never involved his brother in his business dealings.”
In recent weeks, the Oversight committee has deposed several former Biden-family associates. In nearly every interview, the witnesses claimed to have seen no evidence that Joe Biden was directly involved in his son’s or brother’s business ventures.
However, emails from a series of aliases that Joe Biden established during his time as vice president revealed that he used the fake accounts to keep tabs on the family business affairs. The White House, thus far, has refused to authorize the National Archives to release all but 1% of the emails.
Witnesses—including Hunter’s longtime close associate Devon Archer—have also confirmed that, during business meetings, Joe Biden would often call in to talk about “the weather.”
Furthermore, Hunter Biden’s phone records show that in a WhatsApp exchange with a Chinese official—during which he threatened consequences if the Chinese investors failed to pay him—Hunter was physically present at his father’s house in Wilmington, Delaware, and even claimed in the message that Joe Biden was sitting right next to him.
Their warnings fell on deaf ears.
In August 2020, a search warrant uncovered a text between Hunter and Henry Zhao, an executive at a Chinese company that paid Hunter $100,000.
The text mentioned Joe Biden repeatedly.
Investigators were not allowed to verify the information. pic.twitter.com/wpqmrkppz1
— Rep. Jason Smith (@RepJasonSmith) June 22, 2023
Republicans, led by committee chairman, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, are pushing ahead despite the slow progress and routine stonewalling—including a brazen display of contempt of Congress by Hunter, who openly defied a House subpoena with support from both the White House and congressional Democrats.
The allegations of bribery and influence-peddling that has potentially undermined national security could result in impeachment charges against Biden, the ultimate penalty for what the Constitution describes as “high crimes and misdemeanors.” The founding document specifically lists “bribery,” along with “treason,” as examples of impeachable offenses.
Moreover, some Republicans argue that the politically motivated 2019 and 2021 impeachments of former President Donald Trump, over allegations which failed to meet the criminal threshold, effectively lowered the bar on all impeachments.
There had been private discussions about bringing articles of impeachment against Biden to the House floor for a vote in February, but those conversations have since stalled.
Regardless, it seems unlikely that the Democrat-majority Senate will vote to convict the 81-year-old president before the November election—unless, of course, doing so becomes a matter of political expediency as they seek to replace him on the 2024 presidential ticket.
House Republicans have shifted their focus, for now, on impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas over his handling of the situation at the U.S.–Mexico border.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
