A top Republican announced that he will release an interim report on his findings connected to his investigation of Burisma Holdings and its connection to Joe and Hunter Biden.
Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who heads the Senate Homeland Security Committee told reporters on Wednesday that the public can expect an interim report on the committee’s investigation into Burisma within one or two months. Johnson argued that Democrats should want to have some answers about Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Burisma before casting their votes for Joe Biden.
“These are questions that Joe Biden has not adequately answered,” Johnson said. “And if I were a Democrat primary voter, I’d want these questions satisfactorily answered before I cast my final vote.”
The elder Biden surpassed Sen. Bernie Sanders in the delegate count after a strong Super Tuesday performance. Johnson said that Biden’s surge makes his committee’s investigation into Ukrainian gas company Burisma Holdings more significant, but denied that he is investigating the situation solely because of the election.
“My investigations are not focused on the Bidens. They’re just not,” the senator insisted. “But I can’t ignore them because they’re part of the story. They made themselves part of the story. If there’s wrongdoing, the American people need to know it. If there is no wrongdoing or nothing significant, the American people need to understand that as well.”
Republicans have questioned why Burisma gave Hunter a high-paying position on the company board despite him having little experience in the energy sector and a well-documented problem with drug use. At the time, Joe Biden was leading the Obama administration’s diplomatic efforts in Ukraine, leaving critics, including President Trump, to wonder if the company used the younger Biden to leverage the former vice president.
Trump urging Ukraine’s leader to investigate the Bidens and other political rivals became central to an impeachment fight which ended last month with acquittal in the Senate.
Earlier this week, Johnson sent a memo to his committee announcing that they would be considering a subpoena against employees of Blue Star Strategies, which represented Burisma’s interests in the United States while Hunter Biden was on the board. Johnson said the subpoena would investigate the claims that Burisma “sought to leverage Hunter Biden’s role as a board member of Burisma to gain access to, and potentially influence matters at, the State Department.”
Several Democrats have criticized Johnson for escalating the investigation into the Bidens just as the vice president’s campaign takes off.
“I am concerned to see that in the Senate there seems to be a renewed interest in furthering these bogus Russian narratives through the use of their investigative powers. I just think it’s so deeply destructive to be effectively working in a concert with Russian propaganda artists,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said.
Joe Biden’s campaign told Politico that Johnson had done the campaign a “favor” by “admitting that he is abusing” his position to investigate Burisma and the Bidens. Johnson argued that such an investigation was standard for the committee, saying, “I don’t know why any member of my committee would vote against a subpoena that’s just looking for records from a U.S. consulting firm.”
