Republicans See Potential Hunter Biden Link in Classified Documents Case

Republicans See Potential Hunter Biden Link in Classified Documents Case
President Joe Biden (L) waves alongside his son Hunter Biden after attending mass at Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Johns Island, S.C., on Aug. 13, 2022. (Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images)
Ryan Morgan
1/16/2023
Updated:
1/20/2023
0:00

Republican lawmakers are looking into whether President Joe Biden’s son Hunter may be connected in any way to the potentially classified documents recently discovered at the president’s Delaware home and his Washington D.C. office space.

On Jan. 9, The White House announced that potentially classified documents were found at Biden’s old D.C. office space at the Penn Biden Center in November. In the days that followed, the White House announced that more classified documents were found at Biden’s home in Delaware in December and again that same week.

On Friday, House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to White House Counsel Stuart Delery, in which he said that the same Delaware address where these documents were found also “appeared on Hunter Biden’s driver’s license as recently as 2018.”
“The Committee is concerned President Biden stored classified documents at the same location his son resided while engaging in international business deals with adversaries of the United States,” Comer wrote.
The potential connection between these documents and Hunter Biden is notable as Republican lawmakers have already signaled their plans to investigate Biden and his family’s business dealings. In the days after the 2022 midterm elections, as Republicans gained control of the House of Representatives, Comer and other Republican lawmakers announced they would investigate the Biden family businesses and whether the president is compromised by any involvement in those business activities.
Some of Hunter Biden’s international business activities in recent years included dealings in China and Ukraine.
Hunter Biden is also the subject of an ongoing investigation for potential tax crimes and a potentially illegal firearm purchase. The firearm charge stems from allegations Hunter Biden lied about his drug use on a federal Firearms Transaction Record (Form 4473), a six-page form (pdf) gun purchasers need to complete to buy a firearm.
Lying on Form 4473 is a federal violation punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
In an October interview, Joe Biden said Hunter Biden got “hooked on drugs” but that has “overcome that” and that he has “great confidence” in his son.
“I love him and he’s on the straight and narrow, and he has been for a couple years now,” the president said of his son.

Hunter’s Business Deals

In November, as House Republicans announced their plans to investigate the president’s involvement in the Biden family business deals, Comer said the Biden family was at one point “planning to sell one of the largest sources of cobalt for electric vehicles in the world to the Chinese.”
Comer described another deal in which Hunter Biden was allegedly negotiating the sale of natural gas to China around 2017. Comer said evidence exists that Joe Biden had a 10 percent equity stake in that particular business deal through his son.
The subject of the documents found at Joe Biden’s old office space and at his Delaware home is unclear at this time, as is whether Hunter Biden knew about the documents and whether the knowledge they contained would have been useful to any potential business deals. It is also unclear if any of Hunter Biden’s business activities took place around these spaces where potentially classified documents were found.
In his Friday letter, Comer called on the Biden White House to provide all classified documents the Biden administration has discovered and a complete list of the locations where Biden aides searched and discovered classified documents. Comer also asked for the names of aides and lawyers who assisted in these document searches and any communications between the Biden administration and the Department of Justice or the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) relating to the documents they found at the Biden properties.

Comer Seeks Visitor Logs

House Republicans indicated they will investigate the documents discovered at Joe Biden’s home and office after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to look into the recent Biden document discoveries.
On Sunday, Comer sent another letter, calling on the White House to release the visitor log of Joe Biden’s Delaware home from his time as president onward.