House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) on Wednesday defended why he has not yet issued subpoenas in the Biden family business probe, insisting he is practicing restraint to “show good faith,” after Hunter refused to comply with the committee’s request for bank documents and communications.
Comer is investigating the Biden family for nine potential violations, including tax evasion, money laundering, and wire fraud. But with Hunter’s curt rejection of Comer’s request to supply a host of bank records and communications between the Biden family business members, the establishment media has raised questions of why Comer has not issued subpoenas to compel the relevant information.
“We give people plenty of time. When you do subpoenas, if you want to win in court, you have to show good faith effort that you tried to get the information. So we’re checking some boxes,” Comer told Punchbowl News.
“When we do subpoena, if we have to, then we’re going to win the subpoenas in court,” he warned. “It’s not just issuing a subpoena,” Comer said. “It’s about winning.”
Comer explained he intends to issue about 12 subpoenas to individuals who might not willingly comply with the committee’s oversight. The potential subpoenas do not just pertain to the Biden family business scheme but additional investigations the committee has launched, such as the probe into President Joe Biden’s deadly Afghan withdrawal and Biden’s classified document scandal.
“It’s important to me that the dozen or so subpoenas I issue, people comply with,” Comer said. “So we’re on a roll and we’re gonna go.”
In November, Comer first warned of his intention to issue subpoenas to anyone who refused to comply with his probes. In February, Comer told Fox News the “next step will be subpoenas” in the Biden family probe. “We will use the subpoena power,” he said.
File/Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) announces a recess during a hearing before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee at Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on February 8, 2023 in Washington, DC. The committee held a hearing on “Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media Bias, Part 1: Twitter’s Role in Suppressing the Biden Laptop Story.” (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
Hunter is not the only person or entity refusing to comply. The U.S. Treasury has stonewalled the committee by withholding 150 Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on wire transfers between the Biden family flagged by U.S. banks, causing the committee’s chairman to threaten a subpoena. SARs often contain evidence of potential criminal activities, such as money laundering and fraud.
“You’ll be seeing subpoenas go out very soon for the bank information,” Comer told Lou Dobbs on Monday.
The Biden family bank records are a key trove of information that will provide details about how the family business operates and desired transparency on Hunter’s anonymous art sales and foreign business transactions, along with knowledge of whether Joe Biden remains compromised by foreign governments through his family’s business.
Republican probes have also been stalled by former FBI “point man” Timothy Thibault, who allegedly “improperly” “shut down” a probe into Hunter’s laptop that is likely unrelated to the ongoing criminal probe concerning reported tax fraud by the president’s son.
Comer has received some good news of late. A few members of the Biden family inner circle appear to be at least partially complying with Comer’s probes.
File/House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) is seen in front of a newspaper page with a photograph of Hunter Biden and his father President Joe Biden during the Protecting Speech from Government Interference and Social Media hearing with former Twitter employees on Wednesday February 08, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty)
Kathy Chung, Joe Biden’s former “primary gatekeeper,” has agreed to partially comply with the committee’s probe into the classified document scandal and the Biden family’s business. In addition, Hunter’s top financial lieutenant Eric Schwerin is expected to “soon” provide documents to the committee’s investigation, a spokesperson for the committee told Breitbart News.
In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism.
Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from Hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing even to have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
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