(The Center Square) – House Republicans on Thursday invited President Joe Biden to testify at a hearing as part of an ongoing impeachment inquiry into Biden and his family’s businesses.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., made the invitation by letter.
“In light of the yawning gap between your public statements and the evidence assembled by the Committee as well as the White House’s obstruction, it is in the best interest of the American people for you to answer questions from Members of Congress directly, and I hereby invite you to do so,” Comer wrote in the letter.
The letter comes as House Republicans make their case to impeach President Joe Biden. In addition to impeachment, Comer has said he is considering potential criminal referrals to the Justice Department for prosecution of alleged Biden family wrongdoing.
The White House has said the inquiry is meritless.
“Comer knows 20+ witnesses have testified that POTUS did nothing wrong. He knows that the hundreds of thousands of pages of records he’s received have refuted his false allegations,” spokesman Ian Sams wrote on X last week. “This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment.”
Comer and House Republicans have said that the Biden family and associates brought in more than $20 million from overseas entities in China, Russia, Ukraine and more. Comer, who heading the investigation, has alleged that the president’s son, Hunter Biden, used his father to make deals around the world. Checks released by the committee show $240,000 from the Biden family to the president, though the reason for that payment remains unclear, as The Center Square has previously reported.
In his invitation to Biden, Comer pointed to past Presidents who testified before Congress. He noted specifically that President Gerald Ford testified before the Subcommittee on Criminal Justice of the House Judiciary Committee in 1974.
“As Chairman of the Committee, in addition to requesting that you answer the questions posed in this letter, I invite you to participate in a public hearing at which you will be afforded the opportunity to explain, under oath, your involvement with your family’s sources of income and the means it has used to generate it,” Comer wrote.
Comer said the committee would work with President Biden’s schedule, but proposed April 16 for the hearing.
