The House Oversight and Accountability Committee is investigating President Joe Biden and his family for "influence peddling," its chairman, Rep. James Comer, confirmed in a Newsmax interview Saturday.
"There's no question they've influence pedaled for decades," the Kentucky Republican said on Newsmax's "America Right Now," adding that questions must be asked, including "Why was Ukraine was willing to pay Hunter Biden that much money?" [and] "Why is China investing so many millions of dollars into Hunter's shady business dealings and the Biden Center for Diplomacy?"
It's also "very suspicious" that within days of when Biden was to be leaving the vice presidency in 2017, he took trips to Ukraine and China, Comer said.
According to a CNN report, in the final five days of Biden's vice presidency, he met in Kyiv with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and in Switzerland with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as spoke by phone with Iraq's prime minister. He also had calls with the president of Kosovo and the prime minister of Japan earlier that week.
"You have to go back to that time period," said Comer. "The odds of Joe Biden ever returning to politics were probably slim to none at his age and the fact that you know the odds were very slim that he would be the Democratic nominee, much less than the president of the United States."
That means, that Biden was "probably looking at how to maximize his value in the private sector, and there's nothing wrong with that, except when you do it with taxpayer dollars," said Comer.
But now that Biden is president, "this comes back into focus," said Comer. "We have to investigate this. Again, he was using taxpayer dollars and government resources to set these meetings up. We need to know exactly what went on and if this has contributed to the influence peddling and if this, in fact, has compromised this administration."
The committee will also hold a hearing on the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border concerning the Biden administration's policies, Comer said.
"We want to start with the people on the ground," he said. "These are the frontline workers who are having to deal with this every day. They need to be heard … the American people need to know what's really going on at the border."
Comer also discussed the discoveries of documents at Biden-related properties, including the Penn-Biden Center and his Delaware home, and how the FBI chose not to be involved in the search, leading to concerns of unequal treatment between Biden and former President Donald Trump and the documents at his Florida estate.
"I don't think even the most partisan liberals would agree that that passes the smell test," said Comer. "This is another example of a two-tier system."
Meanwhile, Comer said the committee has not heard back from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen about suspicious activity reports concerning Hunter Biden.
"She said she couldn't give us those documents because I was in the minority," said Comer. "We sent her a letter when we became the majority. When I took the reins as chairman of the committee I reminded her that I'm now the chairman of the committee."
One way or another, though, Comer said he is confident he'll get the documents, but it "sure looks bad" that the administration is "doing everything they can to obstruct our investigation."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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