WASHINGTON — Hunter Biden will face questions Wednesday from members of two GOP-led House committees at a closed-door deposition that President Joe Biden’s son had rejected participating in for months.
The deposition, scheduled for 10 a.m. ET, is being held by the House Oversight Committee and the House Judiciary Committee, the two panels that have been leading an impeachment inquiry into the president.
Hunter Biden will appear a week after James Biden, the president’s brother, told lawmakers that at no point during his 50-year business career was Joe Biden involved in his work.
Almost every witness who has testified before the committees has said the president was not involved in his family’s business dealings or has been unable to provide any evidence that his occasional casual encounters with Hunter Biden’s business partners included business discussions.
Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., challenged that testimony in a statement to NBC News, saying the committees had found evidence to support his often-repeated claim that “Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ his family sold to enrich the Bidens.”
Comer said Biden “knew of, participated in, and benefited from these schemes. Joe Biden attended dinners, spoke on speakerphone, showed up to meetings, and had coffee with his son’s foreign business associates. In fact, we’ve documented how Joe Biden has met with nearly all of his son’s foreign business associates as they were collectively funneling millions to the Bidens.”
While Republican sources on the Oversight Committee have previously described Biden’s testimony as the “crescendo” of the House impeachment inquiry, Comer said it would not be the end of the investigation and promised more subpoenas and witnesses to come, but provided no details on who those might be. He added that congressional investigators would “continue to follow the facts to inform legislative reforms to federal ethics laws and determine whether articles of impeachment are warranted.”
A Republican House Oversight Committee source familiar with the preparations said a transcript of Hunter Biden’s deposition would be released “quickly” and Biden’s lawyers would have an opportunity to review it beforehand. The source also said the probe would produce a report with legislative or other recommendations and possible criminal referrals “sometime in the next few months.”
Republicans first issued a subpoena to Hunter Biden in early November, but through his lawyer, he chose not to comply with it for months. He said he would testify only at a public hearing because he felt he did not trust Republicans in a private setting.
Hunter Biden said in rare public remarks at the Capitol in December that for six years, he has been the target of “MAGA Republicans” who “have impugned my character, invaded my privacy, attacked my wife, my children, my family and my friends. They ridiculed my struggle with addiction. They belittled my recovery, and they have tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass and damage my father, who has devoted his entire life to service.”
Multiple sources described Hunter Biden as “ready” for his deposition, adding that they don’t believe Republicans on the committees have any evidence to support their allegations and will focus on taking old emails out of context.
Hunter Biden will repeat what he and other witnesses have previously told the committees, that his father was not involved in his business, the sources said. The president’s son will acknowledge “mistakes” stemming from his addiction, but emphasize he was accountable for them, not his father, they said.
After months of investigation, Republicans have not presented any evidence of wrongdoing by the president, and the White House and Democrats have repeatedly asserted that GOP lawmakers’ claims about Biden are false.
A House Democratic source told NBC News that rather than find evidence of wrongdoing by the president, the investigation “has uncovered a mountain of exculpatory evidence that disproves their allegations” against Biden.
“The evidence could not be any clearer: Joe Biden was not involved in, did not profit from, and took no official action to benefit his family’s business dealings,” the source said. “So, after 14 months of investigation, how can Republicans justify continuing to devote congressional resources and millions of taxpayer dollars to a discredited impeachment inquiry?”
At the center of the impeachment effort is false information that came from former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov, who was indicted this month and accused of feeding the bureau false information about Joe Biden and Hunter Biden during the 2020 presidential campaign.
Smirnov “provided false derogatory information to the FBI” about them, the indictment said, and “promoted a new false narrative after he said he met with Russian officials.”
Republicans, however, have shrugged off the news of the charges against Smirnov and are still pursuing their impeachment inquiry despite arguments from Democrats that the issue at the center of it was based on falsehoods.
A Republican House Oversight committee source told NBC News that “Smirnov was a brick but not the foundation” of the impeachment inquiry. The source said the panel has “lots of unanswered questions” about Smirnov and will place a new focus on the FBI and the confidential human source program going forward.
