House Republicans on Wednesday sent a criminal complaint to the Department of Justice recommending that President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden, be charged with making false statements to Congress.
The letter from the three Republican committee chairs to Attorney General Merrick Garland and special counsel David Weiss comes as Hunter Biden is on trial on unrelated firearms charges brought by Weiss in federal court in Delaware. The trial began on Monday.
The introduction also comes less than a week after former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was convicted by a New York jury of felony counts of falsifying business records.
The letter from House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY), Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) charged that Hunter and James Biden “have made clear false statements to the Oversight and Judiciary Committees about key aspects of the impeachment inquiry and appear to be intentionally attempting to distract from the investigation’s focus on President Joe Biden.”
Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana also supported the move. “If the Attorney General wants to prove he is not operating a duplicitous justice system and targeting the President’s political opponents, he will open a criminal investigation into James Biden and Hunter Biden,” Johnson said in a statement.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee, derided the move, saying it only showed Republicans had failed to prove allegations of wrongdoing against the president.
“All that this painful, lengthy and completely fruitless investigation has proven is that President Biden has not been involved in, benefited from, or taken any official action to benefit his family’s business ventures,” Raskin said, calling the report a “last-ditch effort to distract from President Biden’s exoneration with a ‘hotchpotch’ accusation against the president’s son and brother.”
Hunter Biden and James Biden testified for several hours before the Oversight and Judiciary committees, respectively, in February as part of the impeachment investigation into the president.
In his prepared opening statement, Hunter Biden countered the foundation of the committee’s impeachment investigation: “I come here today to tell the committee one indisputable fact that should end the false premise of this investigation: I did not involve my father in my business,” Biden said in his prepared opening statement.
“Never in my career as a lawyer, in any of my investments or transactions, either domestically or internationally, as a director or as an artist,” the statement said.
The chairmen’s letter charged that Hunter Biden had “improperly distanced himself from business entities” that received funds from foreign individuals and entities, despite previously claiming to be the company’s “corporate secretary.”
They also accused him of falsely claiming that threatening letters to Chinese business partners were sent to the wrong person, though the chairmen maintained that the letters reached the intended recipients.
They also accuse James Biden of misleading them by saying that Joe Biden did not meet with Hunter Biden’s business partner, Tony Bobulinski, in 2017 when he was not in office.
Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abe Lowell, previously called the Republican-led investigation and the hearings a “carnival sideshow.”
NBC News reached out to the Department of Justice for comment. The White House declined to comment, and Hunter Biden’s lawyer was not immediately available for comment. A representative for James Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
