America's Talking - Republican House Oversight Committee Ramps Up Investigation Into Biden Family

Episode Date: August 20, 2023

House Oversight Committee James Comer, R-Ky., is pushing for President Joe Biden’s records from his time as Vice President to probe allegations that he worked with his son to bring in $20 million from overseas entities. Comer sent a letter to the the National Archives and Records Administration demanding unredacted records related to then-Vice President Biden’s meetings and communications with his family members, the latest step in the ongoing investigation into allegations that the Biden family raked in millions using the White House. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America and Focus, powered by the Center Square. I am Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today is Casey Harper. The Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. How are things on this lovely Friday, Casey? Things are good, Dan. Just living the dream, doing my dream job for my dream boss. What about you?

Living the dream just like you, Casey. Oh, great, great. Got some big news. It's more big news to talk about. The Republican-controlled houses investigation into President Joe Biden and his son's business dealings overseas is ramping up. You wrote about it at the center square.com. Even as former President Donald Trump faces his own legal issues, President Biden isn't necessarily out of the woods here, is he? No, I think he's going deeper into the woods. The Oversight Committee releases more and more documents. You know, they've released, if you've been following this at the soonerstorescure.com or this podcast, you remember that, you know, they've released witness testimony from Devin Archer, who is a longtime friend and associate of Hunter Biden, which showed that, or according to his testimony, then Vice President Biden would speak to Hunter Biden, his son on speakerphone when Hunter Biden was in the room with all his, you know, business associates who he was cutting all kinds of deals with. And now that so now they've also released bank records, which kind of back up allegations

that the Biden family and associates via, you know, about 20 shell companies were receiving about $20 million from entities in Ukraine, in Romania, China, Russia, which of course, you don't, you don't have to have foreign policy masters to know that those are adversarial, some adversarial nations or some even nations known for corruption. And so it's just a really interesting development there. And so that has turned up the heat on Biden. Of course, the heat is turned up on Trump as well, which, you know, because of his fourth indictment, this one out of Georgia. So he has four indictments. But the evidence continues to pile up. And I think Biden is feeling the heat. It seems like he might be distancing himself from his son a little bit. At least that's what,

you know, if you read the reporting about that, that's kind of the general sense in D.C. that Biden might be distancing himself from his son a little bit. Now, Biden has claimed that there's, quote, an absolute wall between his family's foreign business dealings and him as vice president. And he's really dismissed any allegations that he was involved in these kinds of deals. But now, in this latest update, the House Oversight Committee of Republican leadership is demanding basically the records that the federal government keeps from Biden's time as vice president to see who he was emailing, how much he was emailing his son. And there's been some things that were redacted and they want to say,

hey, we need unredacted copies of some of this communication over email calls with, you know, then-Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko. So there's a lot of, I think there's a lot more to be dug up here, Dan. And I don't think that's good news for Biden. Right. And of course, we reported at the senator's swear.com last week that Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to finally appointing a special counsel to investigate the Hunter Biden business dealings overseas. Republicans who had been calling for that for months actually criticized the move saying that it was a distraction to take focus away from this Republican-controlled House Oversight Committee's own investigations. and maybe even to interfere with that investigation. So you've got the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee investigating Hunter Biden and President Joe Biden himself.

Now you've got a special counsel within the Attorney General's office investigating these affairs. Which investigation takes precedent? Yeah. I mean, honestly, the DOJ investigation has more authority, takes more precedent. A special counsel is always going to have more authority and more money. than any more partisan, you know, congressional committee. But what the DOJ doesn't have on this issue that is a track record, really, because the House Oversight Committee has released more documents,

broken more news on this case by far than anyone. And this case, you know, I think in the minds of most Republicans, this case would have died a long time ago. And this investigation would be dead in the water if it weren't for the congressional investigation continuing to turn up documents that the Department of Justice just seems kind of uninterested in or at least unwilling to talk, talk about. And we also know from IRS, a couple IRS whistleblowers that testified before Congress earlier this month, I believe, and they said that the Department of Justice, according to them, interfered on behalf of Hunter Biden and pretty heavily to

make him get charged with less or get lesser charges and for certain evidence to not be turned up. And so the DOJ was at the high level was actively, allegedly actively interfering on Hunter Biden's behalf. And so they've really all this time they've had, they haven't really turned anything up. And now we're finding out all this evidence has been here all along. And now we have testimony that actually the high levels of the DOJ was protecting Hunter Biden, which makes sense because, you know, it's the president's son. And the high levels of the DOJ are appointed by the president. They serve at the pleasure of the president, their political appointees. And so, you know.

Of course, all of this is playing out with the 2024 presidential election just about, what, 15 months away, President Biden and former President Trump both facing these investigations. Of course, former President Trump has been indicted four separate times. So all of these legal things are playing out as those two appear, at least the way things stand now, to be heading toward a second showdown in terms. in 2024. It's going to make a fascinating election season. Yeah, it's crazy how we've had either the FBI or some version of the DOJ heavily impacting almost every election. So they, you know, the FBI came out and made some announcement about Hillary Clinton right before the election that she's still probably very upset about that she says helped cost her the election. And then we know that the FBI stopped social media companies from promoting the Hunter Biden laptop story.

told them, they told the social media companies it was just Russian disinformation and they shouldn't promote it, which of course, Trump says swung that election heavily. And now it could be for a third time in a row that in an election year, we have, you know, both candidates facing legal charges. And you can imagine, Dan, some case example, where someone is found guilty or a big press conference happens in October of 2024 that could could significantly shift. shift a close race. Right. And this is going to play out in real time over the next several months. Listeners can keep up with it at DeCenterSquare.com because we will be covering it closely. But, Casey, we are out of time. Thank you for your insights into this story. Please subscribe.

We'll talk to you next week.