White House Pens Suspiciously Desperate Letter Demanding an End to Biden Impeachment Inquiry

Bonchie reporting for RedState 

As my RedState colleague Jeff Charles reported, the White House released a letter on Friday targeting Rep. James Comer and the House Oversight Committee he chairs. 

In it, a suspiciously desperate demand was made to essentially end the impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden and his family's alleged corruption. Specifically, White House special counsel Dick Sauber argued over four pages that because the House had not formally voted to open an impeach inquiry, all subpoenas and interview requests are invalid.

White House special counsel Dick Sauber questioned the validity of the GOP-led impeachment inquiry into President Biden on Friday in a scathing letter sent to House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio).

In the four-page letter, Sauber demanded that Comer and Jordan withdraw their subpoenas and requests for interviews with members of the Biden family and aides, arguing that since the House did not hold a floor vote on the impeachment inquiry, it has not been formally authorized by the legislative body as required by the Constitution.

“In fact, both of you previously supported the position that moving forward with an impeachment inquiry without a vote of the House ‘represents an abuse of power and brings discredit to the House of Representatives,’ ” Sauber wrote, quoting a 2019 resolution disapproving of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) decision to unilaterally initiate an impeachment inquiry into former president Donald Trump.

I'm reminded of the scene from Thor where he leans in and says "Is it, though?" There's no doubt that the White House wants the subpoenas to be invalid because of the lack of a formal vote, but is that actually a requirement under the law? The answer to that is unclear, especially given that it was Democrats who set that precedent when Rep. Nancy Pelosi unilaterally opened an impeachment inquiry into Donald Trump in 2019. 

Then there's the issue of whether Biden family members can only be subpoenaed as part of an impeachment inquiry. That seems like a farcical suggestion given Donald Trump Jr. was subpoenaed by Democrats in Congress in May of 2019. That subpoena was not part of an impeachment inquiry. Instead, it dealt with the results of the Robert Mueller investigation.

In other words, the House Oversight Committee clearly has the legal power to force Hunter Biden and James Biden to appear regardless of whether impeachment is involved or not. That alone would seem to make Sauber's claim rather irrelevant unless he really wants to argue that presidential family members have some kind of broad, unwritten immunity from being subpoenaed. Spoiler: They do not.

The lady doth protest too much, methinks. Right when Comer and company are getting ready to ask questions under oath to the two people at the forefront of the Biden family influence-peddling scheme, the White House wants to shut things down on an asserted technicality. That's just a bit too convenient for my tastes. 

Comer has already pledged to keep moving forward, and I suspect the letter is more of an attempt to set the media narrative. None of that matters, though. CNN will say what CNN was always going to say. What matters is the truth of the situation, and the more House Republicans dig, the worse things look.