The US Treasury Department is set to allow House Republicans to inspect reports on foreign banking and other business transactions by relatives and associates of President Joe Biden, including his son Hunter Biden.
(Bloomberg) — The US Treasury Department is set to allow House Republicans to inspect reports on foreign banking and other business transactions by relatives and associates of President Joe Biden, including his son Hunter Biden.
Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer said on Monday night that the agreement had been made, though he did not immediately provide details as to how his panel would receive or examine those documents.
“We just got word that Treasury said they will give us access” to those documents, Comer told Fox News’ Sean Hannity, on Monday night.
A Treasury Department spokesman declined comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Monday night.
Separately on Monday, the committee’s top Democrat, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, released a letter he wrote to Comer Sunday that, among other things, shows that the chairman had subpoenaed Bank of America Corp. to produce “all financial records” of three Biden associates from 2009 until now.
Raskin mentioned the Bank of America subpoena in the context of blaming committee Republicans of simultaneously working with lawyers for former President Donald Trump to block disclosure of documents related to accusations that the former president was involved in financial misconduct and conflicts.
A Comer spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment on Raskin’s claim.
But Comer, a Kentucky Republican, has been accusing the Treasury Department of foot-dragging in meeting his committee’s demands for access to the so-called “suspicious activity reports” for the Biden family and their associates’ business transactions.
Comer wants those reports — which are used by banks to flag what they deem dubiously large transactions — as part of his panel’s inquiries into the Biden family’s overseas dealings. He said Monday night on Hannity’s program that he did not yet know details of how his committee will be given glimpses of those records.
That investigation is just one of several into the Bidens that Republicans have either started or promised since their party gained control of the House in January.
Comer, in a Jan. 11 letter to Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, had requested all of the “suspicious activity reports” generated in connection to Hunter Biden, the president’s younger brother James Biden and his wife, Sara, as well as associates of Hunter Biden.
The committee’s claims of department delays in allowing access to those reports led Comer last week to demand a transcribed private interview with Treasury’s Assistant Secretary Jonathan Davidson under the penalty of perjury to explain why.
Davidson, in at least two letters, told Comer that Treasury officials were willing to work with committee staff to discuss the limits on how they could accommodate the demand. But without acknowledging there were any Biden-related reports, Davidson also had advised that “improper disclosure” of such information could undermine the executive branch’s “conduct of law enforcement, intelligence, and national security activities.”
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