US House Republicans have begun to take their first steps in their long-held vow to investigate into the business dealings of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son.
The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for any dubious activity reports on Mr Biden's family's “suspicious business transactions”. Republicans on the committee also want former Twitter executives to testify on what they consider to be suppression of information on Mr Biden's son.
Wednesday's announcement is one of the first actions Republicans have taken to investigate the Democratic President since they officially took control of the House last week. The US withdrawal from Afghanistan and Mr Biden's immigration policies are also expected to be targets of Republican investigations.
“Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming,” Committee chairman James Comer said in a press release.
Republicans claim that Mr Biden was involved in his son's business dealings with Ukraine and China.
Former president Donald Trump called on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to investigate Hunter Biden purportedly in a quid pro quo deal for selling Javelins to Kyiv, which resulted in Mr Trump's first impeachment.
“There’s a lot of talk about Biden’s son, that Biden stopped the prosecution and a lot of people want to find out about that, so whatever you can do with the attorney general would be great,” Mr Trump said in the July 25 call, according to a declassified transcript. “Biden went around bragging that he stopped the prosecution, so if you can look into it, It sounds horrible to me.”
Mr Comer asked Ms Yellen to provide the committee with a list of documents by January 25.
“The American people must know the extent of Joe Biden’s involvement in his family’s shady business deals and if these deals threaten national security and his decision-making as president,” Mr Comer said.
The White House labelled the committee's actions as a partisan stunt.
