Hunter Biden testified behind closed doors Wednesday to the House Oversight and Judiciary committees after months of negotiations on his cooperation in the impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden over allegedly corrupt family business deals.
The deposition was attended by members of both parties and was not videotaped, but a transcript will be eventually released. Reports teased Hunter’s defense against Republicans, which included claims his father was not involved in his business deals. The president’s son will testify publicly this year as a part of the negotiated deal with House GOP leadership.
“After seven hours of questions, the Republican majority end the day where they started. They have produced no evidence that would do anything to support the notion that there was any financial transactions that Hunter with his father. Period,” Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell told reporters after the deposition.
A readout of the deposition provided to reporters showed Hunter claimed he was under the influence when he told a Chinese associate in a 2017 message that he was “sitting here with my father.” The associate later transferred $5.1 million into Biden family-linked accounts.
“Hunter admitted that he was high or drunk when he sent the ‘sitting here with my father’ WhatsApp message, sent it to the wrong recipient, and is now embarrassed by the message,” the readout stated.
Hunter asserted his father was not with him at the time of that message, as reported by the New York Post. The outlet noted the president’s son was at his father’s home in Wilmington at the time of the message, according to photos from his laptop.
Hunter dodged questions from reporters at the Capitol.
Several Democratic members who attended the meeting praised Hunter’s performance, specifically his reference to the business deals of former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
“We all noticed, I think, that there were some Republicans nodding their head when Hunter suggested that it would be worth investigating Jared Kushner and his $2 billion from Saudi Arabia,” Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY) said.
Previous reports and witness statements from the GOP impeachment inquiry revealed President Biden met his son’s foreign business associates at coffee, lunch, and dinner when he was vice president, as reported by the New York Post. A reporter for the outlet asked Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) about these meetings Wednesday, who appeared to deny the evidence.
“There were no meetings with the president,” Raskin said.
“Are we meeting right now?” he continued. “A meeting like that, I suppose, where somebody says ‘hello’ and shakes their hand.”
“You’ll check out the transcript and you can see if you believe that,” he added. “I’m not aware of any meetings that took place with the president of the United States or the vice president of the United States or even Joe Biden as a private citizen.”
Democrats who attended the meeting described it as a waste of time. Goldman said a continuation of the impeachment inquiry by House Republicans would show they are “working with Russia” to interfere in the 2024 election. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA) called the investigation a “feckless enterprise.”
“So what we saw I think was a rather embarrassing spectacle where the Republicans continue to belabor completely trivial points they seem to be obsessively focused on,” Raskin told reporters after the first hour of the meeting.