‘Let’s bring ’em all in…’
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has requested information from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo regarding Hunter Biden and his financial dealings with Burisma, a Ukrainian oil company.
Burisma is a “notoriously corrupt” state-run oil company with which Biden was intimately involved, Jordan said in a letter to Pompeo.
And given the fact that Hunter Biden received his position on Burisma’s board while his father, Joe Biden, was vice president, it is worth investigating whether these two facts were related, Jordan said.
Jordan asked Pompeo to provide all unredacted documents regarding Burisma from 2014—the year that Hunter Biden joined the board—until President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, when the elder Biden left office.
Hunter Biden remained on the board, drawing a million-dollar-a-year salary for his “consulting” fees, until the public revelations of his involvement—along with his father’s nascent presidential campaign—forced him to resign last year.
The need for this information is now relevant after conservative watchdog Citizens United revealed hundreds of State Department documents it received from Freedom of Information Act requests, Jordan said.
The new disclosures “provide additional details about the Obama–Biden administration’s actions toward Burisma,” he said.
Jordan did not detail what, exactly, he was investigating. Although he was likely to receive little support from House Judiciary chair Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, his request followed a similar announcement from the Senate.
A group of Republican senators, led by Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee chairman, said it may subpoena some of those implicated in the corrupt dealings, including a U.S. consulting firm, Blue Star, that lobbied the Obama State Department on Burisma’s behalf.
Picking Up the Pace
Although the Burisma scandal may not be directly connected with the Russia-gate hoax, the effort comes as part of a broader election-year push to cast sunlight on the Obama administration’s scandalous misconduct—and that of current Democrat presidential contender Joe Biden in particular.
Speculation has arisen as to why the former vice president visited the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv a mere three days before Trump’s inauguration.
Republicans this week also called for Obama officials to testify about their dealings with Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser. Recently declassified documents showed Flynn was set up by former FBI Director James Comey and the rest of Obama’s “dirty cops,” as Trump has said.
The Senate would have launched this investigation sooner had it not been for the coronavirus pandemic, said Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
“If we weren’t in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis this would be the worst scandal since Watergate,” Cornyn said this week, according to The Hill.
But now that the country is beginning to reopen, GOP senators have made it clear that they plan to move forward with these investigations, and quickly.
“Let’s bring ’em all in,” said Sen. John Kennedy, R-La.
Kennedy broke rank from Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-SC, who “wants to start with some of the lower ranking people,” encouraging an accelerated pace as the GOP’s narrow 53-person majority hangs in the balance this November.
“That’s fine,” he said of Graham’s proposal, “but let’s don’t spread this out over months, or—God forbid—years. Let’s bring them in, let’s put them under oath.”
Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.