House Republicans spent Wednesday’s Oversight Committee trying to turn two of Hunter Biden’s former business associates into star witnesses. They failed.
Republicans claimed to have two witnesses who would finally rip the lid off this whole “affair” during Wednesday’s hearing, luridly titled “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office.” Chairman Jim Comer, R-Ky., promised in his opening statement to show “that Joe Biden has taken action after action to further his family’s plans to get rich.” That allegedly includes supporting efforts from his son, Hunter Biden, and his brother Jim Biden to capitalize on the family name.
The president’s son and brother have privately testified to the Oversight Committee. But apparently none of Hunter Biden’s testimony nor any of Jim Biden’s testimony was important enough for Republicans to include in a two-minute video claiming that “Joe Biden is the Biden family business.” Instead, Republicans played snippets from interviews Hunter Biden’s former associates, Tony Boboluski and Jason Galanis, gave the committee. They also played a snippet of video from Devon Archer, another former business partner of Hunter Biden.
Cleverly, Democrats invited as their witness Lev Parnas, a former associate of Rudy Giuliani. Giuliani was an attorney for then-President Donald Trump, and Parnas was in on Giuliani’s attempts to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine. Trump’s attempt to strong-arm Ukraine and withhold military aid unless it announced an investigation of Biden eventually led to Trump’s first impeachment. Absurdly, those same claims — that Biden was the one who actually strong-armed Ukraine — have made up the bulk of the GOP’s impeachment investigationinto the president. Republicans are pushing forward with this inquiry, even though the person who accused the president of such corruption was recently charged with lying to the FBI.
Parnas was more than happy to remind everyone present that Trump hadcorruptly meddled with Ukrainian affairs to serve his own re-election campaign.