Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent a formal request to Hunter Biden on Thursday for information and records related to his business dealings.
The panel is also seeking records from James Biden, the younger brother of President Joe Biden, and Hunter’s business partner, Eric Schwerin.
Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, have targeted Hunter Biden for years, but they have ramped up scrutiny after taking control of the House this year.
The committee gave the trio until Feb. 22 to respond before they decide whether to issue a subpoena.
CBS was first to report the news.
In a statement on Thursday, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said the panel investigating whether the president was involved in his family’s business dealings and whether he has “compromised national security.”
“The American people deserve transparency and accountability about the Biden family’s influence peddling,” Comer said. “The Oversight Committee is committed to exposing the waste, fraud, and abuse that has taken place at the highest levels of our government. Hunter Biden, James Biden, and Eric Schwerin’s documents, records, and communications are critical to this investigation.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The committee also held a hearing on Wednesday to investigate Twitter’s role in suppressing a story from the New York Post on Hunter Biden’s laptop. Comer accused the company of participating in a “coordinated campaign by social media companies, mainstream news, and the intelligence community to suppress and delegitimize the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, said the company had concerns because the story “at first glance bore a lot of similarities to the 2016 Russian hack and leak operation targeting the DNC. We had to decide what to do. And in that moment, with limited information, we made a mistake.”
Republicans have long accused the president’s son of using his father’s political connections for personal gain. Hunter Biden’s involvement with the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma led to Trump’s first impeachment after he asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate the Bidens.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
