The House Oversight Committee is taking the Biden administration to task for refusing to hand over documentation that is critical for the impeachment inquiry that was launched in 2023. This could be the beginning of a contentious political battle in the nation’s capital as top House committee chairs are intensifying their efforts to obtain early drafts of a 2015 speech given by then-Vice President Joe Biden in Ukraine.
It is believed that during this speech, Biden called for the firing of former Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin, who was investigating corruption related to Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company. Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, was serving on Burisma’s board of directors, which has prompted speculation that Joe Biden was using his position to help his son.
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer (R-KY), House Committee on the Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), and House Committee on Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) sent a letter on Wednesday to White House Counsel Edward Siskel, demanding that the administration provide the documents.
The inquiry is part of the investigation to determine the extent to which President Biden was involved in his son’s foreign business dealings. The letter read, in part:
As relevant here, the Oversight Committee asked NARA to produce “[a]ll drafts from November 1, 2015 to December 9, 2015 of then-Vice President Biden’s speech delivered to the Ukrainian Rada on December 9, 2015.” NARA has informed the Oversight Committee that within a week of receiving the Committee’s request, NARA was able to provide the White House with the full set of documents that cover this request.
Since August 24, 2023, however, the White House has refused to permit NARA to provide the Oversight Committee with any documents related to the 2015 Ukraine speech delivered by then-Vice President Biden. Rather, relying on Executive Order 13489, the White House has extended its review period by 60 days on three separate occasions—September 22, 2023; November 21, 2023; and January 22, 2024.
The committee chairs accused the White House of employing “dilatory tactics” and obstructing the investigation. "Such a lengthy delay in processing a discrete and limited category of documents is unacceptable and appears to represent an attempt to obstruct the Committees’ legitimate investigation," the chairmen wrote.
Biden is suspected of having threatened the Ukrainian government over its investigation of Burisma. It is believed that the then-vice president threatened to withhold aid to Ukraine if it refused to fire Shokin. The Ukrainian officials ended up firing the former prosecutor.
Another memo showed that U.S. officials were getting pressure from Burisma to make the allegations disappear and "feared the energy firm had made two bribery payments in Ukraine as part of an effort to get cases settled." That may tailor to those reports about alleged bribery to the Bidens.
On top of that, a State Department official blamed Hunter Biden for hurting their anti-corruption effort because of his efforts with Burisma.
"The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter's presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine b/c Ukrainians heard one message from us and then saw another set of behavior with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules," embassy official George Kent wrote to Yovanovitch in the Nov. 22, 2016, email marked "confidential."
Despite that recommendation from the task force, Biden still made the threat and then followed through by pressuring Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Shokin. But there's evidence there, too, that blows up that Biden narrative again.
“Despite of the fact that we didn’t have any corruption charges, we don’t have any information about him doing something wrong, I especially asked him … No, it was the day before yesterday. I especially asked him to resign,” Poroshenko told Biden in an audio tape call from March 2016 that was eventually released by a Ukrainian lawmaker in 2020.
The House chairman demanded again that the Biden administration turn over the requested documentation and threatened to use other legal means to compel the disclosure if the White House continues to refuse. While they did not specify what legal avenues they would pursue, it seems likely that they could issue a subpoena for the 2015 speech or possibly hold individuals in contempt of Congress.