Hunter Biden rejects House Republicans' call for public testimony

[March 14, 2024]  By Makini Brice

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden rejected a request to testify to an open hearing before a Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives committee conducting an impeachment probe of his father, his lawyer said on Wednesday.

"Your blatant planned-for-media event is not a proper proceeding but an obvious attempt to throw a Hail Mary pass after the game has ended," his attorney Abbe Lowell wrote in a letter to the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, one of the three panels at the center of House Republicans' impeachment inquiry.

House Republicans allege the president and his family have improperly profited from policy decisions Biden participated in when he was vice president from 2009 to 2017, but have not provided evidence of Biden financially benefiting.

The White House has denied wrongdoing and Hunter Biden, in a deposition with congressional investigators, repeatedly said his father was not involved in, and drew no financial benefit from, his son's business activities.

House Republicans had invited Hunter Biden as well as three of his former associates to a hearing on March 20 as part of their inquiry.

Lowell said Hunter Biden would be unable to attend the hearing because of a court hearing the following day in California.

Hunter Biden's rejection of the offer came after a lengthy back-and-forth with the committee. The panel issued a subpoena demanding he appear for a deposition, which he initially rebuffed, saying he would only appear publicly.

After flouting the demand by repeatedly appearing at the Capitol, House Republicans threatened to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress. The younger Biden appeared for a deposition last month.

"The House Oversight Committee has called Hunter Biden's bluff," James Comer, the chairman of the panel, said in a statement. "Next week's hearing with Hunter Biden and his associates is moving forward and we fully expect Hunter Biden to participate."

House Republicans will soon need to make a decision on next steps on the probe.

Several Republicans have raised questions about whether the allegations rise to the level of impeachment, and a former confidential informant was arrested for lying to the FBI about a company paying bribes to the Biden family - claims that were at the heart of the probe.

Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, is seen as he makes a surprise appearance at a House Oversight Committee markup and meeting to vote on whether to hold Biden in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to a request to testify to the House last month, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., January 10, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo

With Republicans' majority narrow in the House of Representatives, they can spare few votes if Democrats stick together.

The difficulty in passing impeachment resolutions in the narrowly-divided House was demonstrated last month, when the House initially failed to pass articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas, the top border official in the Biden administration.

The House eventually passed the articles of impeachment, but the Senate, which will almost certainly acquit Mayorkas, has not yet taken them up.

The White House has dismissed the impeachment probe into Biden as politically motivated, as both Biden and former U.S. President Donald Trump prepare for the November election. Trump was impeached twice by the House, though he was acquitted both times.

Hunter Biden is facing two criminal trials, both tentatively scheduled for June.

On Wednesday, lawyers for his legal team and prosecutors told U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika in Wilmington that they agreed they could begin a trial the week of June 3 on charges that he violated gun laws. They said they expected the trial to last at most nine days.

A separate criminal tax trial is scheduled to start on June 20 in Los Angeles and is expected to last several weeks.

Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty and faces decades in prison on the charges.

(Reporting by Kanishka Singh and Makini Brice; additional reporting by Tom Hals and Paul Grant; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Jamie Freed)

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