Hunter Biden Offers to Testify in House Inquiry, but Only in Public
The Republican chairman of the Oversight Committee quickly rejected the offer, saying the president’s son must first provide testimony behind closed doors.
Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who is the subject of an investigation by House Republicans into his family, told Congress on Tuesday that he was willing to testify — but only publicly so that Republicans cannot twist or selectively leak what he says.
In a letter to Congress, Abbe D. Lowell, Mr. Biden’s lawyer, criticized the Republican inquiry as a “partisan crusade,” and said he has watched as Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, has used “closed-door sessions to manipulate, even distort the facts and misinform the public.”
Mr. Lowell proposed that Mr. Biden appear at a public hearing on Dec. 13, the date Republicans set for his closed-door interview, or “any date in December that we can arrange.”
“If, as you claim, your efforts are important and involve issues that Americans should know about, then let the light shine on these proceedings,” Mr. Lowell wrote.
House Oversight Committee ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) ripped his GOP colleagues for rejecting Hunter Biden’s request for an open hearing on Dec. 13, when the president’s son is set to appear for a closed-door deposition.
In a statement Tuesday, Raskin called the GOP move “an epic humiliation” and “a frank confession that they are simply not interested in the facts and have no confidence in their own case or the ability of their own Members to pursue it,” referring to the Republicans on his committee.
“Let me get this straight,” Raskin said in his statement. “After wailing and moaning for ten months about Hunter Biden and alluding to some vast unproven family conspiracy, after sending Hunter Biden a subpoena to appear and testify, Chairman [James Comer (R-Ky.)] and the Oversight Republicans now reject his offer to appear before the full Committee and the eyes of the world and to answer any questions that they pose?”
“Chairman Comer’s insistence that Hunter Biden’s interview should happen behind closed doors proves it once again,” he added. “What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth.”
