The House Oversight and Accountability Committee will hold its first hearing on the impeachment inquiry into President Biden on Sept. 28, also announcing plans to subpoena the bank records of his son, Hunter Biden, as soon as this week.
“The hearing will focus on constitutional and legal questions surrounding the President’s involvement in corruption and abuse of public office,” a House Oversight spokesperson said in a statement.
When asked if the hearing would reveal new evidence, committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said the hearing is not expected to cover new ground and took a dig at the media.
“Well, I think that some of you need to have a refresher course on the existing evidence, so we’ll probably rehash some of that if for no other purpose to help educate the Washington, D.C., press corps,” he said.
While Comer has said he believes President Biden accepted a bribe as part of his dealings in Ukraine as vice president, the GOP has yet to find a smoking gun to back those claims.
The lack of new evidence for the hearing will no doubt be a target for Democrats, who say the committee has failed to connect President Biden to any wrongdoing.
The White House on Tuesday bashed Republicans for moving forward on impeachment as Congress appears to be careening towards a government shutdown.
“Extreme House Republicans are already telegraphing their plans to try to distract from their own chaotic inability to govern and the impacts of it on the country. Staging a political stunt hearing in the waning days before they may shut down the government reveals their true priorities: to them, baseless personal attacks on President Biden are more important than preventing a government shutdown and the pain it would inflict on American families,” Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations, said in a statement.
The committee also said it would subpoena Hunter Biden’s bank records along with those of James Biden, the president’s brother.
The crux of the GOP claims relate to President Biden’s effort to oust what the U.S. viewed as a corrupt Ukrainian prosecutor in order to receive U.S. aid.
Republicans have claimed that then-Vice President Biden accepted a $5 million bribe in exchange for helping oust Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin over an investigation into Burisma, the Ukrainian gas company where Hunter Biden was a board member.
President Biden’s actions were in line with calls from other world leaders at the time, and emails among State Department officials from the time show it was Shokin’s failure to address corruption in his own country that led to the push to remove him.
The unverified claim of the $5 million bribe came from a confidential source to the FBI, someone the bureau considered credible even as it was unable to corroborate the tip. The source relayed a conversation with Burisma head Mykola Zlochevsky and noted that exaggeration and bragging about paying off politicians was normal among Ukrainian businessmen.
Comer told reporters Tuesday that he sees Hunter Biden’s bank records as a key way to advance their probe.
“Everyone in America knows why we need those bank records,” he said.
“And they can either provide them or we’ll see them in court.”
Updated at 1:03 p.m. ET