In response to the subpoena sent by the House Oversight Committee, an attorney for Hunter Biden rebuffed the committee’s demand for the president’s son to sit for a closed-door deposition and instead offered for him to testify before a public committee hearing in December.
Earlier this month, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) sent subpoenas to Hunter Biden, James Biden, the president’s brother, and Rob Walker, a former business associate of Hunter Biden, to sit for deposition as part of House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
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In a letter to Comer, Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, rejected the closed-door request and instead said he wants his client to testify before a public committee hearing.
“We have seen you use closed door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public. We therefore propose opening the door. If, as you claim, your efforts are important and involve issues that Americans should know about, then let the light shine on these proceedings,” he wrote. “Accordingly, our client will get right to it by agreeing to answer any pertinent and relevant question you or your colleagues might have, but — rather than subscribing to your cloaked, one-sided process — he will appear at a public Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing.”
Comer has been under pressure from those on the right to subpoena Hunter Biden, who is at the center of the inquiry, and get him to testify. And while the subpoena was for a closed-door deposition, his offer to testify publicly will likely be welcomed by the hard-line conservative members of the committee.
The inquiry is focused on how Joe Biden, throughout his time as vice president and a private citizen, allegedly utilized his role and power to help enrich his family members and whether or not he personally profited from his family’s foreign business dealings.
“Your Committee has been working for almost a year — without success — to tie our client’s business activities to his father,” Lowell wrote. “You state that one of your purposes is to review how a President’s family’s business activities raise ethics and disclosure concerns to inform the basis for a legislative solution. But all your focus has been on this President’s family while turning a blind eye toward former President Trump and his family’s businesses, some of which the family maintained while serving in office — an area ripe to inform your purported legislative pursuits. “
In a statement, Comer accused Hunter Biden of “playing by his own rules” and said that he will not be able to evade a closed-door deposition.
“Our lawfully issued subpoena to Hunter Biden requires him to appear for a deposition on December 13,” Comer said. “We expect full cooperation with our subpoena for a deposition but also agree that Hunter Biden should have the opportunity to testify in a public setting at a future date.”
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Rep. Jaime Raskin (D-MD), ranking member of the committee, called Republicans’ refusal of Hunter Biden’s offer to testify in front of the committee an “epic humiliation” and a “frank confession that they are simply not interested in the facts.”
“After the miserable failure of their impeachment hearing in September, Chairman Comer has now apparently decided to avoid all Committee hearings where the public can actually see for itself the logical, rhetorical and factual contortions they have tied themselves up in,” Raskin said. “The evidence has shown time and again President Biden has committed no wrongdoing, much less an impeachable offense. Chairman Comer’s insistence that Hunter Biden’s interview should happen behind closed doors proves it once again. What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth.”
