GOP senators ask Treasury for financial reports on Hunter Biden

Two GOP Senate chairmen are asking for the Treasury Department to hand over any documents related to Hunter Biden and a Ukrainian energy company amid an ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Trump.

In a letter dated Nov. 15, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) asked for “suspicious activity reports” involving former Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Reuters reported Friday.

The documents do not include findings about any illegal activity itself but are filed by financial institutions when money laundering or fraud is suspected. It is unknown if any such reports exist involving Hunter Biden, and the GOP letter did not include any evidence that Hunter Biden engaged in any activity that would be covered in such reports, according to Reuters.

Hunter Biden has denied any wrongdoing involving his work for the Ukrainian company, Burisma Holdings, which President Trump and his Republican allies have targeted. Trump has claimed without evidence that Joe Biden pushed for Ukraine to fire a prosecutor due to his son’s business interests, though both have denied such allegations.

The GOP senators said Burisma was paying Hunter Biden as much as $50,000 a month and that their committees were investigating “potentially improper actions by the Obama administration with respect to Burisma Holdings and Ukraine,” according to Reuters.

The two chairmen previously asked the State Department for documents related to Hunter Biden and Burisma. The lawmakers gave the Treasury Department a Dec. 5 deadline for the information requested on Friday.

The letter comes as House Democrats continue their impeachment inquiry into Trump over his dealings with Ukraine, with the probe centered on the president’s efforts to get the country to launch politically charged investigations, including a probe into the Bidens.

Democrats have blasted Trump over the efforts targeting Joe Biden, who is a top political rival and a front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

As the House held public hearings over the past two weeks to hear from current and former administration witnesses in the inquiry, GOP lawmakers have aimed to shift gears and focus instead on unsubstantiated allegations involving Hunter Biden in Ukraine.

Joe Biden’s campaign told Reuters that the request means “Trump is now counting on his Republican enablers in the Senate to bail him out.”

“Driven by fear of a mean tweet, they are falling in line, peddling the same disproven lies we’ve heard for months,” campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said.