The report found that the Biden family and business associates received more than $27 million from foreign interests.
House Republicans say there is “overwhelming evidence” that President Joe Biden committed the impeachable offense of participating in a conspiracy to enrich his family while he was vice president during the Obama administration.
The conclusion came in a long-awaited report released on Aug. 19 by Republican leaders of the House Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means committees. The 290-page report, however, stops short of recommending that Congress move forward with impeachment.
The report was released on the eve of the Democratic National Convention, where the party is set to rally behind Vice President Kamala Harris as the new nominee.
Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the evidence produced by the impeachment inquiry constitutes “the strongest case for impeachment of a sitting president the House of Representatives has ever investigated.”
White House spokeswoman Sharon Yang disagreed with that assessment.
“After wasting nearly two years and millions of taxpayer dollars, House Republicans have finally given up on their wild goose chase,” Yang told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement. “This failed stunt will only be remembered for how it became an embarrassment that their own members distanced themselves from as they only managed to turn up evidence that refuted their false and baseless conspiracy theories.”
The president and other Democrats have characterized the investigation as a partisan attack.
Biden has repeatedly said that he had no knowledge of or involvement in his family members’ business dealings. Last year, he called the allegations a “bunch of lies.”From subpoenaed bank records and witness testimony, the report found that the Biden family and their business associates received more than $27 million from foreign interests “by leading those interests to believe that such payments would provide them access to and influence with President Biden.”
They also allegedly secured $8 million in loans that have yet to be repaid from Democrat benefactors by leveraging the Biden name.
Lawmakers allege that Biden “actively participated” in the conspiracy by dining with his family members’ business partners and speaking with them over the phone during business meetings. He is also alleged to have personally benefited from the arrangement to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As evidence for its claims, the report cites a 2014 dinner Biden attended with his son, Hunter Biden, and Russian oligarch Yelena Baturina.
Baturina went on to wire $3.5 million to a firm associated with the younger Biden, the report states.
A July 2017 text exchange between Hunter Biden and a Chinese business partner also appears to intimate the president’s involvement in their joint business venture. After the Chinese company, CEFC, failed to provide $10 million for the venture, the younger Biden demanded to know why, according to the report.
“I am sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment has not been fulfilled,” Hunter Biden wrote in the exchange, which was provided to Congress by whistleblowers at the IRS.
He went on to say that if the issue was not immediately resolved, he would “make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.”
The younger Biden testified to House investigators that his father was not involved in his business dealings. He has accused Republicans of lying and pursing him for partisan reasons.
The report also touched on Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents, charging that he used his position to “conceal his mishandling of classified information as a private citizen.”
“During his tenure as Vice President, Joe Biden removed highly sensitive classified documents from the White House, despite having no authority to do so,” the report states. “Documents with classified markings were later found at the Penn Biden Center, at his personal residence in a garage, and at the University of Delaware.”
Special prosecutor Robert Hur led a separate investigation into the matter, finding that Biden willfully retained and disclosed classified materials while he was a private citizen. Hur ultimately decided not to prosecute. One of the reasons cited was the president’s likely presentation before a jury as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”
House Republicans referred Hunter Biden, and the president’s brother, James Biden, to the Justice Department in June for criminal prosecution for making false statements to Congress during the investigation.
That same month, Hunter Biden was convicted in Delaware on three felony gun charges in an unrelated case. He will also stand trial in California in September for felony tax offenses.