Republicans in the Senate may finally get somewhere with their probe into Hunter Biden.
Sen. Ron Johnson (WI) said that he plans to force a vote on the first subpoena in his committee’s probe of Hunter Biden and his work at the Ukrainian gas company, Burisma Holdings, next week, The Hill reported. The probe could take on new significance as Joe Biden, thanks to a Super Tuesday victory, consolidates his front runner status for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination.
Hunter Biden’s Burisma work under fire
Hunter Biden sat on the board of the energy firm while his father was President Barack Obama’s point man for fighting “corruption” in Ukraine. His position at the company has been called a seedy conflict of interest at best, but Republicans have also accused his father of pressuring Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating the company by threatening to withhold $1 billion in loan guarantees.
Republicans passed on the opportunity to cross-examine Hunter or Joe during the five-month impeachment drama, which centered on President Donald Trump’s desire to have Ukraine investigate the Bidens, opting instead to probe their work after Trump was acquitted at trial. Johnson, who chairs the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said that he wants to force a March 11 vote on a subpoena for a consultant with ties to Burisma.
Johnson wants to subpoena Andrii Telizhenko, who said he plans to co-operate. Telizhenko was a former consultant for Blue Star Strategies, a company that sought to change Burisma’s standing with the State Department, Fox News reported.
“What you’ll probably see on our committee is once we have verified enough information we just might publish an interim report and lay out this is what we know,” Johnson said.
Romney to block?
But Johnson’s move may fail thanks to the intervention of a familiar Trump foe. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT), who sits on the panel, indicated that he would not support any “political investigations” of the Bidens.
“There’s no question but that the appearance of looking into Burisma and Hunter Biden appears political, and I think people are tired of these kind of political investigations,” Romney said Thursday.
Johnson is seeking the subpoena over the objections of the ranking Democrat, and the committee has a narrow Republican majority, so Romney’s vote is necessary for the subpoena to succeed. Last month, Romney earned the sudden respect of many Democrats and liberal media — the same forces that called him a racist, sexist cornball in 2012 — for having the “courage” to convict Trump for abuse of power.
Ukraine redux?
Meanwhile, Democrats and their allies in the media have robotically insisted that there is “no evidence” of any wrongdoing by the Bidens, but there has never been any investigation to “debunk” the charges. If Joe Biden is Donald Trump’s opponent in November, Americans can probably expect more of that hand-waving as the Bidens’ Ukraine connections come back into the picture.
Johnson’s move comes as Biden scored a nationwide victory in Super Tuesday’s primaries — solidifying his status as the favorite for the presidential nomination. The surprise comeback capped off a dizzying week: Biden’s rivals Pete Buttigieg and Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) dropped out and endorsed him after Biden won South Carolina’s primaries, and the field continued to narrow as Michael Bloomberg and Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) called it quits after Super Tuesday.
It appears that Americans could be hearing a lot more about Hunter Biden in the coming months.
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