WASHINGTON — House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., is requesting that the White House provide documentation of a $200,000 loan that President Joe Biden made to his brother James Biden in 2018.
In a letter Thursday to White House counsel Edward Siskel, Comer asked for records including the loan payment, loan agreement and any other supporting documents related to the check Biden received from his brother dated March 1, 2018.
“The current lack of documentation leaves reason to doubt claims that this transaction was repayment for a legal loan,” Comer wrote. “We request documentation clarifying the nature of this payment and whether all applicable documentation and IRS filings were properly made.”
Comer, whose committee is one of three leading an impeachment inquiry into Biden, cited the Internal Revenue Code for reporting “below-market [rate] loans” in questioning whether the president had adhered to specific requirements for issuing the loan and whether any interest had been paid.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The White House previously indicated that Biden made the loan to his brother in 2018. Last week, White House spokesperson Ian Sams wrote on the X platform that the check referred to by Republicans was a “loan repayment” from when Biden lent his brother money. “When he was out of office in 2018, no less,” Sams added.
When the impeachment inquiry was launched in September, Sams said in a statement that House Republicans have “turned up no evidence of wrongdoing” in nine months investigating Biden.
The House Oversight Committee has indicated that none of the records it obtained showed that the president made a large loan payment to his brother.
In Thursday’s letter, Comer said bank records obtained by his committee show that James Biden paid his brother $200,000 on the same day that he received $200,000 from Americore, a company that was then embroiled in bankruptcy proceedings.
Comer suggested the transaction was evidence that the president “personally benefited from his family’s shady influence peddling of his name and their access to him.”
Citing documents from Americore’s bankruptcy proceedings, Comer suggested that the company worked with James Biden because the president’s brother allegedly flaunted that his family ties could “open doors” and had suggested his political connections would help him obtain a sizable investment from the Middle East.
Comer announced plans to subpoena bank records from James Biden, the president’s son Hunter Biden, “and their affiliated companies” dating back to 2014, during the panel’s first impeachment inquiry hearing last month.
A panel of Republican-picked witnesses at the Sept. 28 hearing said there is no evidence that Biden has committed a crime, while urging that additional bank records were needed for a complete assessment on the matter.
Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the committee, criticized Comer’s “overbroad” subpoenas, which he said were “nothing but a fishing expedition” in a letter to the Kentucky Republican on Thursday.
“These subpoenas represent a stunning abuse of the Committee’s subpoena authority and create a deeply troubling precedent of using the power of the gavel to demand unfettered access to private citizens’ irrelevant financial records,” Raskin wrote.
Rebecca Kaplan reported from Washington, and Zoë Richards from New York.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
