A Republican senator testifying on Feb. 9 before a new House panel described in gritty detail how his investigations of influence peddling and business deals of President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, and brother, James, with controversial foreign entities were repeatedly mislead, subverted and manipulated by Department of Justice (DOJ) and FBI officials.
But contrary testimony from a Democratic representative who gained national prominence leading the second impeachment of Donald Trump in 2021 made clear minority members of the panel view allegations of DOJ and FBI abuses as nothing more than cover for efforts to put the former president back in the White House.
In his opening statement to the first hearing of the House Judiciary Committee’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said DOJ and FBI officials told the news media and Congress that claims of corrupt business dealings with foreign interests by Biden family members were “disinformation.”
But in fact, Grassley said, bank records “financially linked Hunter Biden and James Biden to entities and individuals connected with the communist Chinese regime. We also acquired business records with Hunter and James Biden’s signatures alongside those same Chinese nationals.
“How were they supposed to be paid? According to bank records, there were wires from companies linked to the communist regime. In three floor speeches, we made those bank records public and asked this question to our partisan detractors: Are these official bank records Russian disinformation?
“We also shared hundreds of pages of bank records with U.S. Attorney [for the District of Columbia David] Weiss. He’s failed to respond. Now, as our investigation continued, whistleblowers approached my office with allegations that the FBI created an assessment in August 2020 ... According to these whistleblowers, that assessment was used by FBI Headquarters to improperly discredit negative Hunter Biden information as disinformation. This scheme allegedly caused investigative activity then to entirely cease.”
Grassley continued, telling the subcommittee that access to FBI evidence regarding Biden family business connections has been tightly restricted within the bureau, and that his office has evidence the FBI Washington Field Office “improperly ordered information to be closed by the FBI related to Hunter Biden’s potential criminal conduct in October 2020–just before the election–even though it was verified or verifiable.”
And in a disclosure that is certain to receive much more attention from the subcommittee in coming days, Grassley said “other whistleblower disclosures to my office make clear that the FBI has within its possession very significant, impactful and voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by Hunter and James Biden. These disclosures also allege that Joe Biden was aware of Hunter Biden’s business arrangements and may have been involved in some of them.”
The Iowa Republican, who has served in Congress since 1975, told the panel that “congressional oversight is a constitutional demand. I’ve dedicated my career to it. And during the course of my career, I’ve run countless investigations.
“In the past few years, I’ve never seen so much effort from the FBI, partisan media, and some of my Democratic colleagues, to interfere with and undermine very legitimate congressional inquiries. It’s become a triad of disinformation and outright falsehoods.”
One of Grassley’s Democratic congressional colleagues, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), told the subcommittee that he fears the panel will “take oversight down a very dark alley filled with conspiracy theories and disinformation, a place where facts are the enemy and partisan destruction is the overriding goal.”
Raskin said “the odd name” of the subcommittee “constitutes a case of pure psychological projection. When former President Donald Trump and his followers accuse you of doing something, they are usually telling you exactly what their own plans are.
“By establishing a select subcommittee on weaponization, they are telling us that Donald Trump’s followers, who obviously control the subcommittee, will continue weaponizing any part of the government they can get their hands on, to attack their enemies—defined as anyone who stands in the way of their quest for power.”
Raskin claimed the purpose of the subcommittee and all House Republican investigations is to provide support for Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign. If the subcommittee were seriously interested in probing weaponization of government, he added, “it would quickly zero in on the Trump administration itself, which brought weaponization to frightening new levels across the board.”
As an example, Raskin cited a six-week period during his Oval Office tenure in which the former chief executive fired five of the federal government’s 72 congressional chartered Inspectors-General (IG). The IGs were created by Congress in 1978 to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in the government. The Maryland Democrat argued that Trump did so only “because they were doing their jobs.”
Delegate Stacey Plaskett of the Virgin Islands, the subcommittee’s top Democrat, warned Republican Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio that she and her partisan allies would strenuously oppose any attempt to use the congressional oversight process to “muck up” ongoing DOJ investigations of Trump.
“There is a difference, my colleagues, between legitimate oversight and weaponization of Congress and our processes, particularly our committee work, as a political tool. I am deeply concerned about the use of this select subcommittee as a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories, and advance an extreme agenda that risks undermining Americans’ faith in our democracy,” Plaskett told the hearing.
“As a former prosecutor, I am even more troubled by the suggestion that this subcommittee may attempt to investigate ongoing criminal investigations ... I hope not, but I suspect that most of the investigations the majority of my Republican colleagues want to look into and potentially muck up are criminal investigations” of Trump.
In a clear reference to Trump, Biden and the Biden family, Plaskett declared “I want to be crystal clear, my Democratic colleagues and I will resist any attempt by this subcommittee to derail ongoing, legitimate investigations into President Trump, any other president, and others within his orbit.”
