President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden has refused an invitation from Republican lawmakers to appear at a public hearing before Congress, according to his attorney, who cited a scheduling conflict and denounced the hearing as a “carnival side show.”
Abbe Lowell, Mr. Biden’s attorney, said in a letter to House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) that his request for Mr. Biden to appear at a March 20 public hearing alongside other witnesses can’t be met because of a court hearing the next day in California.
Mr. Lowell said that the scheduling conflict is the “least of the issues,” while denouncing the hearing as not a “proper proceeding” but an “obvious attempt to throw a Hail Mary pass after the game has ended,” pointing to the arrest of former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who is accused of lying to agents and falsifying records about the alleged business dealings of President Biden and his son.
“I must confess my surprise by your hasty request,” Mr. Lowell wrote. “After that six-plus-hour deposition on February 28, 2024, along with the realization that your inquiry was based on a patchwork of conspiracies spun by convicted liars and a charged Russian spy, I thought even you would recognize your baseless impeachment proceeding was dead.”
Mr. Lowell argued that multiple witnesses had “undermined the central premise” of the hearing, namely that President Biden benefited from his son’s business dealings.
“President Biden has done nothing wrong and certainly nothing, even in your misapplication of the impeachment provisions of the Constitution, to warrant further proceedings,” he argued.
‘We Fully Expect Hunter Biden to Participate’
Mr. Comer issued a statement in response to Mr. Lowell’s letter, arguing that Mr. Lowell’s client had called for a public hearing for months and was now inexplicably backing out.“The House Oversight Committee has called Hunter Biden’s bluff,” Mr. Comer wrote. “Hunter Biden for months stated he wanted a public hearing, but now that one has been offered alongside his business associates that he worked with for years, he is refusing to come.”
Mr. Comer also challenged Mr. Lowell’s characterization of the prior hearings and evidence surfaced thus far, arguing that evidence that has emerged shows that President Biden misled the public when he denied any involvement in his son’s business dealings.
“During our deposition and interview phase of our investigation, Hunter Biden confirmed key evidence, including evidence that his father, President Joe Biden, lied to the American people about his family’s business dealings and in fact attended meetings, spoke on speakerphone, and had coffee with his foreign business associates who collectively funneled millions to the Bidens,” Mr. Comer wrote. “However, parts of Hunter Biden’s testimony contradict the testimonies of Devon Archer, Jason Galanis, and Tony Bobulinski.”
The Republican lawmaker said that despite Mr. Lowell’s letter, he still expects Mr. Biden to show up at the hearing.
‘The Brand’
After Mr. Biden testified on Feb. 28, Mr. Comer alleged in remarks to reporters that 10 members of the Biden family, including President Biden, “either participated or benefited from the family’s influence-peddling schemes.”Mr. Comer said that President Biden was “the brand” that the Biden family was selling and that his holding of high office was the only reason that any of the international business transactions that saw tens of millions of dollars flowing to the Biden family took place.
President Biden has repeatedly denied any involvement in his family’s business dealings.
Prior to the Feb. 28 hearing, members of the House Oversight and Judiciary committees had interviewed several Biden family business associates, including Mr. Biden’s former business partners Rob Walker and Tony Bobulinski.
Mr. Bobulinski said in congressional testimony on Feb. 13 that the president was a key “enabler” of the Biden family’s overseas business dealings.
Not long before the 2020 election, Mr. Bobulinski came forward with a series of explosive disclosures prompted by messages discovered on Hunter Biden’s laptop, including one in which a 10 percent cut from a Chinese business deal would be “held by H for the Big Guy.” In particular, he said that President Biden was the “Big Guy” referred to in the correspondence.
Mr. Bobulinski, who is slated to be one of the witnesses interviewed during the March 20 hearing, weighed in on Mr. Biden’s refusal to attend.
“I was disappointed to see the news today that Hunter is running away from his chance to tell the American people the truth,” Mr. Bobulinski said in a statement emailed to The Epoch Times. “He’s been adamant in wanting to go before the American people, and Oversight is now giving him that opportunity. Now is the time to step up, Hunter, as you have said you want to do. Don’t cower in the face of accountability and in this fight for truth and democracy.”
Another of Mr. Biden’s business associates, Devon Archer, also testified before committee members last summer.
Mr. Archer testified that then-Vice President Biden appeared in person at business dinners attended by his son and his son’s business partners in 2014 and 2015.
He also testified that Mr. Biden placed his father on speakerphone during other conference calls with his business partners at about this time.
