Republicans in the United States House of Representatives have continued their investigation into the family of Democratic President Joe Biden, making their first official requests for documents related to his son’s and brother’s foreign business pursuits.
“If President Biden is compromised by deals with foreign adversaries and they are impacting his decision making, this is a threat to national security,” James Comer, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said in a statement on Thursday.
Accusing the Biden family of “influence peddling”, Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, issued formal letters to son Hunter Biden and his business partner Eric Schwerin.
A third was also sent to the president’s brother James Biden, with all three letters requesting a broad range of materials, from financial activity and scheduling documents to communications with specified individuals.
The requests also asked that James and Hunter Biden turn over any materials “designated classified“.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden pushed back against the scope of the investigation in a letter to the committee on Thursday, calling the requests “a sweeping attempt to collect an expansive array of documents and communications from President Biden and his family”.
The lawyer, Abbe Lowell, also questioned whether the committee had “a legitimate legislative purpose” for investigating a “private citizen” like Hunter Biden. He dismissed Comer’s accusations as “inaccurate and baseless conclusions under the guise of a real investigation”.
In the statement accompanying Thursday’s document requests, Comer had accused members of the family of having “attempted to sell access” to Biden’s political career and connections.
Comer claimed to have evidence that family members engaged with “individuals who were connected to the Chinese Communist Party”, though none was provided with Thursday’s statement.
The requests come a day after the House Oversight and Accountability Committee questioned former executives from the social media company Twitter over a decision to temporarily block a story about Hunter Biden from being shared on the platform.
<<Aljazeera>>