House GOP takes aim at Hunter Biden: Do the Republicans have a thing on the Biden family?

With President Joe Biden on the verge of announcing that he will officially seek re-election, Republicans in Congress have been busy conducting investigations that they hope will tarnish the 46th president’s public image enough to convince voters that former President Donald Trump , not Mr. Biden, deserves four more years at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Since taking control of the House of Representatives in January, Republican committee chairs have sent out a flurry of document requests and subpoenas to advance their investigations, with many taking to Fox News and other friendly television outlets to say that they have uncovered heinous misdeeds and are preparing. expose it to the world. So far no irrefutable evidence of irregularities has surfaced.

And so far, Biden himself has not been the subject of the various congressional investigations. Instead, the Republicans are laser-focused on using the full oversight power of the legislative branch to target Biden’s youngest (and only surviving) son, Hunter Biden.

A Yale-educated lawyer and former lobbyist, the young Biden has had more than his fair share of troubles, many of which are already in the public domain.

He is currently a target in a lengthy Justice Department investigation overseen by David Weiss, the Trump-appointed US Attorney for the District of Delaware. Weiss, who is one of only two Trump appointees asked by President Biden to remain in office, has been investigating whether Hunter Biden violated US tax laws by failing to report income earned from business ventures. abroad and not pay taxes on that income, and if you violated laws against lobbying foreign governments without registering as a foreign agent.

Weiss is also reportedly looking into whether Hunter Biden, who has a long and well-documented history of addiction problems, violated federal law by stating he was not using drugs when he filled out a background check form to purchase a firearm. in 2018.

So far, Hunter Biden has not been charged with any crimes and the investigation led by Weiss remains open.

While the Justice Department investigations into Hunter Biden took place behind closed doors, the congressional investigations by the House Oversight and Judiciary committees largely took place under the bright lights of television studios.

In appearance after appearance on Fox News, Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky has made increasingly serious allegations against Hunter Biden, whom he and other Republicans have accused of selling his father’s influence to foreign bidders in China and elsewhere, and funnel the profits into their pockets. the 46th president and other members of his family.

They also accused Biden’s brother, James, who is also a veteran lobbyist, of similar wrongdoing, and worse.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Rep. Nancy Mace have accused Biden and his family of profiting from what they describe as a human smuggling ring.

In a video posted to her Twitter account, Ms Greene said she saw “astonishing evidence of human trafficking” involving the Bidens, which she said “involved prostitutes, not just from here in the United States but from countries as well. foreigners like Russia and Ukraine. ”.

Those unproven allegations stem from Treasury Department documents known as Suspicious Activity Reports, which are generated by banks whenever customers make any type of large wire transfer or transfer of funds that is close to the amount that must be reported to the regulators.

Such reports are not necessarily an indicator of illegal activity and, because they are not public information, it is not possible to verify Ms. Greene’s outrageous claim.

But according to experts and Democratic operatives engaged in efforts to defend the president, the indictments against Hunter and James Biden appear to be part of a long-running Republican effort to build a narrative about what Trump and others have called the “family business.” Biden”. ”: a bizarre analogue to the real-life business that Mr. Trump owned during his time in the White House.

The former president and others in his camp have suggested without evidence that Hunter and James Biden somehow used their businesses to financially support Biden, who was one of the least wealthy members of Congress during his more than three decades as a senator but went into significant amounts of money from book and lecture contracts during his time away from government.

Kyle Herrig, executive director of the Congressional Integrity Project, said the independent The GOP investigations aim to smear Biden while giving Trump and his family a pass, who, according to public records, benefited greatly from his time in the White House.

“I think at the end of the day, the American people are seeing these investigations for what they are, which are partisan political stunts. And I think Maga politicians smearing the family of President Biden, Hunter and others, these politicians are hypocritical after ignoring the numerous conflicts of interest of Donald Trump and his children,” he said.

Herrig noted that Jordan, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, explicitly said that his efforts would be aimed at returning Trump to the presidency in 2024, even before the GOP won a majority in last year’s election. But he said those efforts don’t seem to carry much weight with the voting public.

That may be because, thus far, they have not identified anything that Biden or his family have done that violates federal law or even comes close to the schemes they have described in television appearances.

“I think they are finding that they are complete failures, that they have been a failure from the beginning. And they are not convincing anyone,” she said.

Michael LaRosa, former press secretary to first lady Jill Biden, who now runs the Facts First Super PAC, said the independent that Republican cries of a “two-tier justice system” ring hollow at a time when Mr. Weiss, the US Attorney for Delaware, is still leading an active investigation into Hunter Biden.

“I don’t know why the Republicans are screaming and crying when there is already a major federal investigation into a tax issue, a gun registration issue and a Fara issue,” he said.

“I would say that if even a Trump-appointed prosecutor … concludes that there was no criminal act, then I would say that there really isn’t much anyone else can do,” he said.

LaRosa also echoed Herrig’s view that the GOP-led investigations into Biden’s family are meant to counter Democrats’ evidence-based criticism of Trump and the way he used the presidency to fill the coffers. of his family.

“Because the Trump family is engaged in such vulgar and unethical behavior, they are trying to muddy the waters, but it hasn’t really worked,” he said.

Comer, the House Oversight chairman, seems to share that view at least somewhat.

During a recent appearance on CNN, he admitted that his committee has found nothing to suggest that Biden or members of his family have broken the law in their private businesses.

“Well, we’ve found a lot of things that are certainly unethical, we’ve found a lot of things that should be illegal,” he said.

But LaRosa suggested that the various Biden investigations are not moving forward because the allegations against the president and his family seem unhinged and amateurish, and the presentations at congressional hearings fall short of convincing.

“These guys are pretty amateurish, in terms of getting the mainstream media to cover their shows, which…by programming and production standards, have been just terrible. There just isn’t enough there. There are too many wild innuendos and no one really takes them seriously. And therefore they have not penetrated into the mainstream or into the bloodstream of the American people,” he said.