Sen. Ron Johnson notified the Senate Homeland Security Committee of his intent to seek a subpoena against Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian company tied to Hunter Biden.
Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican who leads the committee, sent a memo to his fellow members on Monday announcing that he would be seeking a subpoena to call Blue Star Strategies in to testify before Congress.
Blue Star Strategies represented the interests of Burisma Holdings in the United States. Burisma Holdings hired the younger Biden to sit on the board of the company while his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, was leading diplomatic efforts in Ukraine.
In the memo, Johnson said testimony from Blue Star Strategies was necessary to address allegations that the company “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.” He noted that his office obtained U.S. government records through its investigation into the situation, which aligned with the allegations.
The senator added that Blue Star Strategies supplied some documentation, but key records were not turned over by a former consultant for the firm, Andrii Telizhenko. Telizhenko notified Johnson that the records requested could not be supplied voluntarily because of nondisclosure agreements signed while he worked for the firm. Johnson explained that the committee would need to subpoena the documents to legally mandate that Blue Star Strategies and Telizhenko complete the full request for documentation.
The Wisconsin Republican also explained that he raised the issue of subpoenaing members of Blue Star Strategies with the ranking Democratic member Gary Peters, who feared that pursuing an investigation into Burisma could perpetuate Russian disinformation. Peters requested a briefing by the FBI about potential national security threats, which Johnson approved, but sent a letter of disapproval for the subpoenas before receiving the briefing.
Johnson noted that the subpoena of Blue Star Strategies was narrow and was limited only to Telizhenko’s work for Burisma while employed at the firm. Johnson told Peters, “Any concerns about disinformation efforts is simply not relevant to whether or not the committee should seek to obtain these specific records.”
He added, “Accepting records and testing them against other information — not willfully ignoring other relevant information — is intended to discover and prevent misinformation, not advance it.”
In the memo, Johnson also accused Democratic members of “selectively leaking” information about the investigations into Burisma, which have largely taken place “outside the public spotlight.” He added, “Apparently, some here in Congress believe they are above the law when they publicize the fact of a meeting and the purported details of conversations that occurred in a classified setting.”
He urged members to vote to approve the subpoena when he schedules the votes.
The younger Biden was paid tens of thousands of dollars per month for his work for Burisma, a natural gas firm. Many Republicans have questioned why Burisma would have hired Biden, given his lack of experience in the energy sector and his well-documented drug abuse issues. The elder Biden, who was the vice president at the time his son worked for Burisma, just won his first presidential primary race in South Carolina.
President Trump has long questioned the Burisma-Biden arrangement. He requested that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky open an investigation into Burisma, which led to his impeachment in the House and his later acquittal in the Senate.
