Sept. 28 (UPI) — The House Oversight Committee on Thursday will hold its first impeachment hearing into President Joe Biden‘s family business dealings in an effort to appease hardline House Republicans who accuse the president of abuse of power.
The panel will convene at 10 a.m. EDT at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington to lay the groundwork for the impeachment investigation by calling four witnesses, including tax and financial experts and former administration officials.
The testimony was expected to serve as the basis for bringing charges against the sitting president.
The investigation is focused on drawing a connection between Biden and unethical business practices by his son, Hunter Biden, when he served on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma from 2014 to 2019.
“The Oversight Committee will continue to follow the evidence and money trail to provide the transparency and accountability that Americans demand from their government,” the committee said in a statement last week.
As part of the hearing, the committee will conduct a review of Hunter Biden’s bank records and tax payments following a previous investigation by prosecutors retained from the Trump administration, which resulted in no criminal charges against Biden.
Thursday’s hearing will feature testimony from witnesses called by the committee’s Republican majority, including Bruce Dubinsky, a forensic accountant and founder of Dubinsky Consulting; Eileen O’Connor a former assistant attorney general with the U.S. Department of Justice Tax Division and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley.
The Democrats will call Michael J. Gerhardt, a professor of jurisprudence at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Previously, Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., called the impeachment proceedings necessary to obtain official documents and bank records from Biden to determine whether he had taken foreign bribes to help his son, however, there has been no evidence so far to indicate that Biden had broken the law, while the president continues to deny any wrongdoing.
House Oversight Chair James Comer acknowledged that Thursday’s hearing was “not expected to cover new ground,” but noted that Republicans had “uncovered an overwhelming amount of evidence showing President Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain.”
“We’ll follow the money … whether it be China, Romania, Ukraine, Russia, Uzbekistan, it went from there through a shell company — or two or three — and then it was dispersed to nine different Biden family members,” Comer said.
Republicans continue to claim the Bidens enriched themselves through Hunter Biden’s deals, raking in more than $20 million in illegal foreign money that was allegedly funneled through various shell companies, but
However, GOP lawmakers have yet to prove that any money paid to Hunter Biden had ever benefited the president or anyone else in the Biden family.
Fact checkers with the Washington Post have determined that Hunter Biden only made about $7 million during his time with Burisma while most of the purported shell companies connected to him were found to be legitimate businesses.
“Without doubt, Hunter Biden’s shady business deals undermined America’s image and our anti-corruption goals, and his conduct was thoroughly reprehensible,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., said in a recent op-ed. “What’s missing, despite years of investigation, is the smoking gun that connects Joe Biden to his ne’er-do-well son’s corruption.”
On Wednesday, the House Ways and Means Committee submitted 700 new pages of financial documents into evidence, while Democrats continued to blast the investigation as a “political stunt,” saying Republicans were pursuing baseless conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden, who resigned from Burisma in 2019 to head off any potential conflicts of interest as his father ran for president.
At the time, the incumbent President Donald Trump was facing his first impeachment, while his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani began publicly claiming that a Ukrainian oligarch had bragged about paying off the Bidens, however, the FBI was never able to verify the information, which had been provided by a confidential source.
“Chairman Comer’s whole sham impeachment drive is based on a lie crafted and peddled by Trump and Rudy Giuliani that has been repeatedly debunked by multiple credible sources,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., said in a statement ahead of the hearing, adding that Giuliani’s associates have admitted “there is nothing to the Burisma conspiracy theory.”
McCarthy launched the impeachment inquiry on Sept. 12 without a vote.
“This logical next step will give our committees the full power to gather the full facts and answers for the American public,” McCarthy said at the time. “That’s exactly what we want to know — the answers. I believe the president would want to answer these questions and allegations, as well.”