Hunter Biden will be grilled in public in the next stage of the Republican-led impeachment inquiry into his father after contrasting claims about private testimony given to Congress.
Republicans said “contradictory” statements by President Biden’s 54-year-old son meant he should undergo public questioning this year.
Democrats called it a “deep-sea fishing expedition” designed to “humiliate the president” in the run-up to the election.
Hunter Biden spent about seven hours being questioned on his business activities and denied that his father was involved, as Republicans in the House of Representatives allege.
“For more than a year, your committees have hunted me in your partisan political pursuit of my dad,�� he said, according to his prepared opening statement released before the private hearing. “You do not have evidence to support the baseless and Maga-motivated conspiracies about my father because there isn’t any,” he added, referring to Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.
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He accused Republicans of trafficking in “innuendo, distortion and sensationalism” and insisted: “I did not involve my father in my business.” Asked how the hearing had gone as he left the building, he replied: “Great.”
James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House oversight committee, said: “I think this was a great deposition for us. So this impeachment inquiry will now go to the next phase, which is a public hearing.”
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A transcript is set to be released in the coming days.
Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, said: “The Republican members wanted to spend more time talking about my client’s addiction than they could ask any question that had anything to do with what they call their impeachment inquiry. There is no evidence … and today only confirmed that.”
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Members asked about Hunter Biden’s lucrative position on the board of the now-defunct Ukrainian energy company Burisma and a proposed venture with the Chinese company CEFC, as well as his personal life.
One line of inquiry is his attempt to set up a deal with CEFC, then China’s largest private energy company. On Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop an email from 2017, after his father had left office as vice-president, suggested “the big guy” would get a 10 per cent stake in the venture. Hunter Biden’s former business associate Tony Bobulinski claims “the big guy” was President Biden.
Hunter Biden confirmed in court this July that he earned “just under a million dollars” in 2017 from a company he formed with a partner “associated with a Chinese energy company called CEFC” as well as a further $664,000 from “a Chinese infrastructure investment company” he identified as CEFC. In March 2018 he received $1 million in “legal fees for Patrick Ho”, a Chinese CEFC lobbyist who was later convicted of bribery and corruption by a court in Lower Manhattan.
