House Republicans heard explosive testimony from President Joe Biden’s family business partners Wednesday in a public hearing that confirmed the president’s personal involvement in global schemes to sell influence over American government.
Tony Bobulinski, a former family business partner turned whistleblower who told lawmakers President Biden was the “brand” sold to foreign governments, doubled down on accusations of corruption with sworn testimony in public.
“I want to be crystal clear: from my direct personal experience and what I have subsequently come to learn, it is clear to me that Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ being sold by the Biden family,” Bobulinski told lawmakers. “His family’s foreign influence peddling operation — from China to Ukraine and elsewhere — sold out to foreign actors who were seeking to gain influence and access to Joe Biden and the United States government.”
Lawmakers featured Bobulinski alongside Jason Galanis after closed-door depositions with the two witnesses. Devon Archer, another former business partner, and Hunter Biden also sat for closed-door depositions with House committees, but turned down congressional invites to testify in public.
His attorneys previously demanded a public hearing in exchange for Hunter Biden’s cooperation with congressional subpoenas. Then Biden attorney Abbe Lowell suddenly demanded lawmakers hold a public hearing to probe the business practices of his former client, Jared Kushner, potentially violating legal ethics rules. If House Republicans held a public hearing with Kushner, Lowell wrote in a letter last week, “Mr. Biden would consider an invitation for that event.”
House Republicans are probing whether to draw up articles of impeachment against President Biden for selling the use of his political positions to foreign oligarchs. House investigators have discovered more than 20 shell companies established by the Biden family to funnel tens of millions of dollars from corporate leaders from adversarial nations. Witnesses testified Wednesday that President Biden was at the center of the family’s efforts to rake in foreign profits.
“The Bidens sell Joe Biden. That is their business,” said James Comer, the chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee at the beginning of the hearing on “Influence Peddling: Examining Joe Biden’s Abuse of Public Office.”
Testifying from prison, Galanis said the Bidens aimed to make “billions, not millions” from selling political favors to oligarchs in China and Russia. Galanis is currently serving a 14-year prison sentence for securities fraud, which Galanis told lawmakers last month also involved Archer and Hunter Biden.
Democrat Obstruction
Democrats spent Wednesday’s hearing attempting to obstruct the impeachment proceedings with repeated interruptions to insist Republicans have no proof of influence peddling claims they have “exonerated” the president. Their handpicked witness Lev Parnas, also a convicted criminal, even went so far as to claim he “found precisely zero evidence of the Bidens’ corruption in Ukraine.”
On the contrary, House and Senate investigators have uncovered bank receipts, White House visitor logs, testimonies from Biden business partners, text messages, and other documents indicating the Biden family sold their patriarch’s name and position to foreign oligarchs including several in Ukraine.
Yet Democrats pressed forward with a stunt campaign to delay, disrupt, and dismiss the hearing. When members heard about text messages about the Biden family business on Bobulinski’s cracked Blackberry phone, Democrats, led by Raskin, introduced a motion to subpoena the device.
Bobulinski previously offered to show the text messages to members who wanted to see them, so Jordan quickly countered with a motion to table. Comer agreed but was forced to wait for a clerk to record a formal vote before proceeding.
To Democrats’ dismay, members’ recorded votes tallied up in favor of tabling.
After the minutes-long delay, Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia asked Bobulinski whether he would turn over his phone to the committee.
“I’m willing to sit in a room with the chairman and the ranking member with my phone and their staff and we can go through each and every text message,” Bobulinski said.
New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez later asked Bobulinski whether he witnessed the president commit a crime, to which Bobulinski answered with an emphatic “Yes.”
“What crime?” Cortez pressed.
“Well, how much time do I have to go through?” Bobulinski answered.
