House Oversight Committee Republicans to Hold Hearings on Multiple Biden Administration Issues

Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, delivers remarks during a hearing in the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, on Feb. 1, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee announced they would this week be conducting hearings into multiple issues under the purview of the Biden administration.

According to Oversight Republicans, they will be holding hearings on the origins of COVID-19, the border crisis, the energy crisis, inflation, waste and fraud in pandemic spending, and the Biden family investigation, among other things.

“Accountability is coming,” the group stated on Twitter when announcing the investigation.

The first hearings on the history of COVID-19, artificial intelligence developments, the border situation, and the depletion of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve begin on March 8.

Chief Border Patrol agents will testify at a border hearing, while the COVID-19 origins probe will involve Dr. Robert Redfield, the former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as medical and scientific professionals.

According to the Oversight Committee’s schedule, they will then look at “waste, fraud, and abuse” in pandemic spending on March 9, as well as the role of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) the government’s largest employment.

Kiran Ahuja, the director of OPM—as well as representatives from the Treasury, Small Business Administration, and the Department of Labor—is scheduled to provide testimony.

Lastly, the committee will examine the Biden family on March 10, following charges that the Treasury Department is “stonewalling” the GOP investigation into the president’s son Hunter Biden’s offshore business transactions.

Jonathan Davidson, the director of legislative affairs for the Treasury Department, will be the only witness in the case on March 10.

Prior to serving as the Economic Nominations Confirmation team head on the Biden-Harris transition team, Davidson spent 10 years as Sen. Michael Bennet’s (D-Colo.) chief of staff.

Senate Republicans are also requesting information from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines asking her to turn over the materials from her office’s latest assessment on the origins of COVID-19, as The Epoch Times previously reported.

The senators sent a March 6 letter asking Haines to provide the “memoranda; emails; interim and final assessments provided by each IC [intelligence community]; and any other information” that her office considered in developing its assessment.

Border security has also been of particular interest to Senate Republicans after Attorney General Merrick Garland testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on March 1 that he believes the Mexican drug cartels created the fentanyl crisis “on purpose.”

“It’s a horrible epidemic, but it’s an epidemic that’s been unleashed on purpose by the Sinaloa and the new generation Jalisco cartels,” Garland said, as The Epoch Times previously reported.

Ranking Member Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) noted that the drug, which is a synthetic opioid that is 50 times more potent than heroin, is thought to kill more young people than gun violence and car accidents combined.

The White House did not immediately respond to The Epoch Times’s request for comment.