House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) announced Tuesday plans to hold a hearing next week on the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, the first hearing of its kind since Republicans launched the inquiry last week.
The hearing, which will take place Sept. 28, will examine the “constitutional and legal questions surrounding the president’s involvement in corruption and abuse of public office,” a committee spokesperson said.
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Comer also plans to subpoena bank records of the president’s son and brother, Hunter and James Biden, “as early as this week,” the spokesperson said.
Comer, who has been leading an investigation into allegations Joe Biden was inappropriately involved in his son’s business dealings, has subpoenaed a number of banks and received thousands of bank records in response, but these forthcoming subpoenas will mark the first time Comer has subpoenaed financial records of the president’s immediate family.
The White House denounced news of the impeachment hearing in a statement, saying, “Staging a political stunt hearing in the waning days before [Republicans] may shut down the government reveals their true priorities: to them, baseless personal attacks on President Biden are more important than preventing a government shutdown and the pain it would inflict on American families.”
The hearing announcement comes after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) launched the inquiry last week, saying it was the “logical next step” after Republicans had “uncovered serious and credible allegations … of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption” by Joe Biden.
Comer has been involved in vetting the most serious allegation — that Joe Biden accepted a multimillion-dollar bribe to fire a Ukrainian prosecutor responsible for investigating an energy company with which Hunter Biden held a lucrative board seat. The claim, which remains unproven, was allegedly made by company President Mykola Zlochevsky and was reported by an FBI informant on an FD-1023 form in 2020.
Two other chairmen, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Jason Smith (R-MO), are leading the impeachment inquiry alongside Comer.
Jordan is investigating the Justice Department’s yearslong inquiry into Hunter Biden and allegations the first son received preferential treatment during it, while Smith is working with two IRS whistleblowers who were assigned to the case and alleged it had been “slow-walked” by the government.
McCarthy drew criticism for launching an impeachment inquiry without holding a floor vote on it, which would have required a majority of the House to vote in favor of the inquiry for it to proceed.
Some pointed to a DOJ policy wielded by Republicans in 2019 during former President Donald Trump’s first impeachment that deemed impeachment inquiries meaningless without the House voting to adopt a resolution to begin them.
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Jordan countered in an interview with the Washington Examiner that “the courts have been clear. You don’t necessarily need a vote for the House to proceed with a duty or a power that is uniquely and specifically the House of Representatives’s under our Constitution.”
He pointed to federal judges who had been impeached without floor votes but added that “there may be a vote at some point. … And that may add some added weight to it,” he said, in reference to the fact that subpoenas could face fewer challenges from their recipients if bolstered by a House-passed resolution.
