After Hunter Biden Is Deposed By House Republicans, GOP Congressmen Acknowledge It Was A Dud For Them

On Wednesday, Hunter Biden appeared on Capitol Hill for deposition in the GOP’s impeachment inquiry into his father, President Joe Biden, and to deny the claim that the president had any involvement in his business dealings.

House Oversight and Judiciary Committees members interviewed Hunter during a closed-door session on Capitol Hill.

The president’s son came for the deposition before 10:00 a.m. while being flanked by his attorney Abbe Lowell. He did not give statements or speak to reporters.

“I am here today to provide the Committees with the one uncontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry: I did not involve my father in my business,” Hunter told lawmakers in his testimony. “Not while I was a practicing lawyer, not in my investments or transactions domestic or international, not as a board member, and not as an artist. Never.”

Hunter accused Republicans of hunting him in their “partisan political pursuit of” the president and said that the deposition “should put an end to this baseless and destructive political charade.”

He testified for over six hours with Republican lawmakers who made him the core focus of their investigation of any of his father’s wrongdoings.

The House Oversight and Judiciary Committees have not provided any evidence linking the president to his family’s business arrangements. This long-awaited deposition seemed to offer Republicans no new investigative leads.

Despite this, Rep. James Comer (R-Kentucky), the House Oversight Committee’s Republican chairman, left Capitol Hill promising to proceed with their probe, indicating that a public hearing may soon be required to find some “discrepancies” between Hunter’s testimony and that of previous witnesses.

Comer did not specify the nature of these discrepancies.

According to Rep. Dan Goldman (D-New York), Democrats strived to portray Hunter’s closed-door testimony as the “nail in the coffin” of the troubled impeachment effort.

The complete transcript of the deposition has been made public.

One claim Republicans made was that Hunter flew with his father on Air Force Two to have him help close a deal in China and that Joe had coffee with his son’s partner, Jonathan Li.

In China, Hunter had met a friend with whom he would later go into business. This friend shook hands with Joe in a reception line.

The coffee-related claim came from Devon Archer, who had not been there. Hunter and Li went for coffee after the reception line.

“My father shaking Jonathan Li’s hand in a rope line in a hotel had nothing to do with my relationship with him,” Hunter claimed, according to the transcript. “I had an over 10-year relationship with Jonathan Li. He was a friend, and he was also a very astute businessperson. He was educated in London, and we have become, not just friends, but I trusted him to be a very capable businessperson.”

“My father had absolutely no knowledge of, no involvement in, had no awareness of my business relationship with Jonathan Li,” he added.

Republicans also claimed that Hunter introduced his father to business partners during dinner meetings in Washington, D.C.

The restaurant where these two meetings had been held is Cafe Milano and it sits approximately between the White House and the vice-presidential residence.

The meetings in question were centered around Hunter’s work for the World Food Program.

“I’ve had dozens of dinners at Cafe Milano for dozens — for many, many different reasons, whether it was just to be with family or whether it was to be with friends or whether it was to be with friends and associates or whether it was to do, for instance, a dinner that was a presentation for the U.S./U.N. World Food Program,” the president’s son argued. “And, in one of the occasions that you’re speaking about, the entire purpose of the dinner was to present, and there was a big screen at the end of the room. I got up and made a presentation.”

In late November 2023, Hunter stated in a letter from Lowell that he would not appear for a closed-door interview with a Republican-led House Oversight Committee on Dec. 13 as part of Republicans’ impeachment investigation into the president.

Lowell told Comer that he uses closed-door sessions to manipulate, even misrepresent the facts and misinform the public. He also claimed that his focus has been on the president’s family and not Donald Trump and his family’s businesses.

Comer disagreed with Lowell’s argument on X, saying that Hunter “is trying to play by his own rules,” and that the House Republicans “agree that Hunter Biden should have [an] opportunity to testify in a public setting at a future date.”

The Committee refused to accept the open hearing proposal and threatened to hold Hunter in contempt of Congress if he did not appear, leading to Hunter relenting.

On Dec. 7, Hunter was indicted in California for three felonies and six misdemeanors –  have been filed in addition to federal firearms charges in Delaware, which allege that Hunter lied about his drug use to purchase a firearm, which he possessed for a brief period in 2018.

The charges mainly center around nearly $1.4 million in unpaid taxes Hunter owed between 2016 and 2019, a period in which he struggled with addiction.

The California documents highlight Hunter’s expenditures on drugs, strippers, luxury hotels and exotic cars. The prosecutor said everything but his taxes was prioritized.