EXCLUSIVE — House Oversight Committee Democrats are shoring up their defense of President Joe Biden ahead of a GOP meeting Friday to discuss impeachment and the likelihood of a vote to authorize their inquiry.
Democratic staff are circulating a five-page memo titled “Mountain of Evidence Shows No Wrongdoing by President Biden” that pushes back on the claims made throughout the impeachment inquiry and argues Republicans have fallen far short of finding one impeachable offense.
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“After nearly a year of investigating, House Republicans have collected an extraordinary amount of evidence in their investigation of Hunter Biden’s business activities,” the memo says. “There is no lack of evidence — and the evidence shows no wrongdoing by President Biden, let alone an impeachable offense.”
House Republicans disagree.
The impeachment inquiry is looking into whether Biden improperly used his position of power to enrich himself and his family, used his influence to pressure the Department of Justice to help his son, Hunter, and how involved he was in his family’s foreign business dealings.
At a press conference on Wednesday, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) laid out his “top four” pieces of evidence on Biden that shows an impeachment inquiry is warranted.
“These facts are alarming. They’re alarming to the American people. They are alarming to us,” Johnson said at the press conference. “And so, while we take no pleasure in the proceedings here, we have a responsibility to do it.”
The Democratic memo’s purpose is to try and refute the need for an impeachment inquiry ahead of the likely vote to authorize one. While technically, the House is conducting an impeachment inquiry since former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announced the creation of one, a knock from the White House and Democrats has been no vote ever started it and, therefore, it is not a legitimate inquiry.
In the memo, the Oversight Democratic staffers focus on rebutting claims about Biden made by House Republicans, including two central themes to the impeachment inquiry: that Biden was part of a bribery scheme involving his son’s former employer and that his brother paid him money as part of a bribe or money laundering scheme.
A key component of the impeachment inquiry is the claim that Biden, when he was vice president, and his son Hunter Biden were bribed by Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company where Hunter Biden was a board member, to put pressure on the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor allegedly investigating the company. These allegations were raised by a confidential informant whose account was documented by the FBI on a form known as an FD-1023.
“Hunter Biden gets put on the board of Burisma. … He’s not qualified to be on the board,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) said at a press conference on Wednesday. “The executives at Burisma ask Hunter Biden specifically, ‘Will you weigh in with folks in D.C. to help us deal with the pressure we are under?’ A few days later, Joe Biden gets on the plane, flies to Kyiv, and announces that ‘you will not get the money that was already approved unless you fire the prosecutor who was applying the pressure.’”
The memo from Oversight Democrats pushes back on this narrative from Republicans, claiming the allegations have been “debunked” repeatedly, pointing at testimony from Republican witnesses and officials in the Trump administration.
It also cites testimony from Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden who served on the board of Burisma, who said he was unaware of any bribe to Joe Biden and would disagree with the assertion that Burisma paid Joe Biden.
Another main theme of the inquiry is two separate checks paid to Joe Biden from his brother James Biden. Republicans on the committee have raised concerns that the checks represent evidence that Joe Biden personally profited from his family’s private business dealings, something he has long denied. James Biden had the cash to send his brother a $40,000 check in 2017 and a $200,000 check in 2018 because businesses he worked with had paid him similar amounts just before he wrote the checks.
“Joe Biden has lied continuously to the American people about how he was not only aware of but was involved with and financially benefited from his family’s corrupt influence peddling schemes. Look around this room on these poster boards. The evidence is here,” House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said, motioning to posters of the checks. “And unlike Joe Biden, the bank records do not lie.”
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However, the memo cites past reporting on a pair of wire transfers that show Joe Biden, through an account controlled by his attorneys, sent his brother money on two occasions before receiving the same amount back.
“Rather than accept these facts, Republicans have resorted to cherry-picking and distorting facts in order to justify continuing this sham investigation aimed at satisfying the demands for retribution of President Trump, who was twice indicted and now faces 91 felony counts,” the memo reads.
