President Joe Biden could still go down in U.S. history as one of the few presidents impeached, according to a top House Republican leader.
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House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) has reacted to President Biden’s rejection of the invitation to testify in the impeachment inquiry and cautioned that the White House’s actions could potentially amount to a new impeachable offense, Just the News reported on Wednesday.
“[The] White House’s continued hostility towards Congress’s prerogative to investigate these matters constitutes obstruction and contempt of Congress—which are themselves impeachable offenses,” signaling a possible new avenue in the House’s wide-ranging impeachment inquiry, a letter Comer sent earlier this week says.
On Wednesday, Comer sent the letter to Biden’s Special Counsel, Richard Sauber, reiterating several requests previously directed to the White House. These requests urge the production of documents and responses to critical questions.
On Monday, Sauber sent a letter to Comer informing him the President would not appear for public testimony and declared the impeachment inquiry “over,” the outlet noted.
“Your Committee’s purported ‘impeachment inquiry’ has succeeded only in turning up abundant evidence that, in fact, the President has done nothing wrong,” Sauber wrote.
“Yet rather than acknowledge this reality, your March 28, 2024, letter contains the same litany of false allegations that have been repeatedly debunked and refuted by the very witnesses you have called before your Committee and the many documents you have obtained,” he added.
The Kentucky Republican pushed back, however.
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in the Biden family. Like his son, Hunter Biden, President Biden is refusing to testify in public about the Bidens’ corrupt influence peddling. This comes as no surprise since President Biden continues to lie about his relationships with his son’s business partners, even denying they exist when his son said under oath during a deposition that they did,” Comer said in a statement earlier this week.
“It is unfortunate President Biden is unwilling to answer questions before the American people and refuses to answer the very simple, straightforward questions we included in the invitation. Why is it so difficult for the White House to answer those questions? The American people deserve transparency from President Biden, not more lies,” he added.
In his Wednesday memo, Comer reiterated several questions addressed to the White House in earlier letters to which Biden has thus far been unresponsive. Comer highlighted the White House’s ongoing obstruction of the probe into President Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents, preventing witnesses from testifying, and withholding “thousands of pages” of documents related to his use of pseudonym emails.
Additionally, Comer pointed out the White House’s refusal to provide drafts of the then-vice president’s significant December 2015 speech in Ukraine, which coincided with his son Hunter’s position on the board of Burisma at the time.
“So far, the White House has declined to provide any information about these encounters, which have been confirmed by multiple impeachment witnesses,” Just the News added.