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Hunter Biden skewered Republican efforts to impeach his father Wednesday ahead of his closed door testimony before Congress, calling the inquiry a “destructive political charade” and the supposed evidence a “house of cards of lies.”
During opening remarks before the House Judiciary and Oversight & Accountability Committees, the junior Biden denied any malfeasance during his work as a businessman, practicing lawyer, investor and artist.
“For more than a year, your Committees have hunted me in your partisan political pursuit of my dad,” Biden said in a prepared statement released ahead of his testimony. “You have trafficked in innuendo, distortion and sensationalism — all the while ignoring the clear and convincing evidence staring you in the face.”
Democrats agreed. “What we saw was a rather embarrassing spectacle where Republicans continued to belabor completely trivial points,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said during a break in the proceedings. “I believe based on this first hour that this whole thing has been a tremendous waste of our legislative time and the people’s resources.”
The Joe Biden impeachment inquiry began last September, with House Republicans alleging his son’s business dealings are evidence of the president’s corruption. Among the claims cited by Republicans was Hunter Biden’s placement on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, and other related conspiracies. Hunter Biden said Wednesday that the evidence posited as damning by impeachment advocates was actually skewed, fraudulent and decontextualized.
“Republicans have taken my communications out of context, relied on documents that have been altered, and cherry-picked snippets of financial or other records to misrepresent what really happened,” he said.
Biden also criticized several key witnesses. Among them are Gal Luft, an Israeli think tank leader arrested on charges of being a foreign agent; Jason Galanis, a financier who is currently serving a 14-year sentence for financial crimes; and Alexander Smirnov, a former FBI informant who was arrested this month on fraud charges. A fourth witness, former Biden business partner Tony Bobulinski, has also been widely discredited for his claims though he has not faced criminal prosecution.
Smirnov was indicted Feb. 15 for allegedly providing fraudulent testimony to the FBI about the Biden family, and was arrested in Las Vegas. Several days later, a subsequent DOJ filing revealed Smirnov had been in contact with multiple Russian agents while working as an FBI informant. The revelations essentially rendered his testimony worthless, including a document where he alleged the Biden family accepted millions in bribes, and left Republicans scrambling to maintain their inquiry remains viable.
Biden said his testimony Wednesday “should put an end” to the impeachment inquiry, which he called a waste of “valuable time and resources.”
“Rather than follow the facts as they have been laid out before you in bank records, financial statements, correspondence, and other witness testimony, you continue your frantic search to prove the lies you, and those you rely on, keep peddling,” Biden said. “Yes, they are lies.”
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