Three Republican leaders of congressional committees with a stake in the impeachment investigation into President Joe Biden are demanding the White House turn over all drafts of a speech he delivered as vice president in Ukraine eight years ago.
“It’s not enough to set up a new anti-corruption bureau and establish a special prosecutor fighting corruption,” the vice president told the Rada. “The Office of the General Prosecutor desperately needs reform. The judiciary should be overhauled. The energy sector needs to be competitive, ruled by market principles—not sweetheart deals.”
The speech took place as the Obama administration committed $190 million to help Ukraine “fight corruption in law enforcement and reform the justice sector,” in addition to the existing $570 million from the United States to support Ukraine’s state building agenda. It also took place more than a year after President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was paid an annual salary of about $1 million to sit on the board of Burisma, one of Ukraine’s largest natural gas companies.
During his December 2015 trip to Kyiv, according to the House Republicans, then-Vice President Biden strong-armed the Ukrainian government into firing its top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who was investigating Burisma at the time.
Three months later, Mr. Shokin was forced out of office, and nine months later, all legal proceedings against Burisma were ceased.
“In his December 2015 speech, then-Vice President Biden called for the firing of the Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin,” the Republican lawmakers said in a statement Wednesday, noting that President Biden would later brag about the role he played in the prosecutor’s ouster.
Seeking Documents
According to Wednesday’s letter, the House Committees on Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means first requested the speech drafts from the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in August, but the White House has never authorized the agency to release those documents.Specifically, NARA said it would have been able to provide the requested documents within a week of the committees’ first request. But the White House has extended its review period over the documents for 60 days on three separate occasions, most recently on Jan. 22.
“For more than five months the White House has declined to authorize the production of these draft speeches to the Oversight Committee or to assert a valid privilege over them,” wrote Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), House Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.)
“Such a lengthy delay in processing a discrete and limited category of documents is unacceptable and appears to represent an attempt to obstruct the Committees’ legitimate investigation,” they warned. “These dilatory tactics must cease, and the White House must permit NARA to release these documents forthwith.”
In their letter, the three congressmen told the White House that it has until Feb. 7 to turn over the requested documents or to assert a “valid privilege” over the information, or the House committees they chair “will consider the use of compulsory process to require the White House’s production of the speeches.”
The Republicans also noted the White House previously allowed NARA to turn over presidential records related to the Trump administration after the usual one-month review period. For example, in response to public requests, the agency last year released a cache of documents related to its retrieval of 15 boxes of presidential records stored at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.
House Oversight Panel to Interview James Biden
Amid House Republicans’ broader inquiry into the Biden family’s foreign business dealings, the House Oversight Committee said Wednesday that it has secured an interview with President Biden’s brother, James Biden.Mr. James Biden’s interview is scheduled for Feb. 21, a week before that of his nephew, Mr. Hunter Biden. The oversight committee has subpoenaed both of them.
“We look forward to his testimony,” the committee said in a post on X.
The interview will likely involve two checks from Mr. James Biden to his brother: one for $200,000 and another for $40,000. Both payments were made while President Biden was not holding a political office.
The $200,000 check from Mr. James Biden was described in the check’s memo line as a loan repayment, and came after he received a loan from Americore, a Florida-based health care company in poor financial condition.
Another $40,000 check, which was also marked as a loan repayment, came after Mr. Hunter Biden secured a major deal with Northern International Capital, a Chinese energy company affiliated with CEFC China Energy. Mr. James Biden used some of the money from his nephew to repay his brother, a transaction Republicans characterized as taking “laundered China money.”
“It all began with a shakedown in the summer of 2017, when Hunter Biden sent a message to his CEFC associate demanding a $10 million capital payment,” Mr. Comer said in a video posted to X last year. “As Hunter Biden extorted this associate, Hunter claimed he was sitting with his father and that the Biden network would turn on his associate if he didn’t pony up the money. The extortion scheme worked.”
