Hunter Biden spent 6 hours testifying on Capitol Hill Wednesday and giving obtuse answers to questions from a joint panel from the House Oversight and House Judiciary Committee.
Within his testimony Hunter Biden consistently blamed his drug addiction for his memory lapses and suggested he was often too high/stoned to recall events. Within the testimony he claimed to have attempted to kill himself ‘on a daily basis.’
The majority of the questioning surrounded his father’s involvement in various payment schemes that were part of the foreign businesses Hunter was responsible for handling. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky) made the full transcript available to the public earlier today. The 229-page document is full of information – READ HERE.
[READ FULL TRANSCRIPT]
WASHINGTON — First son Hunter Biden corroborated many of the core facts in what Republicans say is a constellation of interactions between Joe Biden and his offspring’s foreign partners that shows Hunter and his uncle James were selling access to their powerful relative.
The 54-year-old’s closed-door impeachment inquiry testimony was released Thursday — just a day after he sat for questions about President Biden’s recurring role in lucrative foreign business relationships.
Hunter maintained that his 81-year-old father was not corrupt and that his own abuse of alcohol and drugs was to blame for many of the appearances to the contrary in business ventures that often at points involved first brother James Biden.
“The pattern that I see is that you literally have no evidence whatsoever of any corruption on the part of my father,” Hunter said during a heated exchange with Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas).
“And, therefore, what you’re trying to do is, you’re trying to make every single thing in business that I was ever involved in somehow corrupt.”
However, Hunter did verify that there were two dinners at Washington’s Cafe Milano in 2014 and 2015 where Joe Biden mixed with his Kazakhstani, Russian and Ukrainian patrons — including Burisma board adviser Vadym Pozharskyi, whose company paid Hunter a $1 million salary beginning in 2014 as his father spearheaded US policy toward Ukraine. (read more)
After several dramatic twists and turns in the Will He or Won't He Appear for a Deposition saga involving Hunter Biden, the First Son finally sat for a closed-door interview with members and staff counsel of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees on Wednesday, and the transcript has now been released.
The transcript is 229 pages, so it will take some time to read and digest, but I wanted to go ahead and share it here (it's linked above and may be viewed below) and share an initial observation regarding the maturity level of one Eric Swalwell (D-CA).
While preliminary introductions were being made and staff counsel was reviewing ground rules for the testimony — and before testimony had even begun — Swalwell, who's allegedly 43, interrupted, demanding to know when the transcript would be released and making snide Russia references.
[STAFF COUNSEL]: Finally, I will make note for the Members and staff that the contents of what we discuss in the deposition today is confidential under the House deposition regulation. Under the rules, the chairman and ranking minority member shall consult before any release of testimony, transcripts, including portions thereof.
MR. SWALWELL: Hey, Chairman, about that, parliamentary inquiry, when are you going to release this transcript?
[STAFF COUNSEL]: I'm going to get to that in one moment, sir.
MR. SWALWELL: I'm asking the chairman, not you.
Chairman Comer, when are you going to release the transcript on this?
CHAIRMAN COMER: We're conducting the deposition.
MR. SWALWELL: Yeah, but you've got 91 of them buried and --
CHAIRMAN COMER: I don't care what your question is.
MR. NADLER: Well, I care what his question is. When are you going to release the transcript? There are 91 transcripts that haven't been released yet.
CHAIRMAN COMER: We will release the deposition -- the transcripts like we always do when we agree to release the deposition, the transcripts.
MR. SWALWELL: Shouldn't the witness know?
[STAFF COUNSEL]: Yeah, we want to put the transcript out within a day.
MR. NADLER: Within a day? Very good. Thank you.
[STAFF COUNSEL]: We'll do our best, yeah.
MR. SWALWELL: In English or Russian?
[STAFF COUNSEL]: Excuse me? What'd you say?
CHAIRMAN COMER: We've already answered the question, Eric, and we're not going to tolerate outbursts like we had the last time.
MR. NADLER: He said within a day. That's fine.
(At least Jerry Nadler was displaying a measure of maturity.)
Following the deposition, the committee chairs, James Comer (R-KY), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Jason Smith (R-MO) joined Sean Hannity to discuss the takeaways from the deposition.
Comer says much of what the embattled First Son had to say contradicted the testimony of three other witnesses who have appeared before the committees.
“We were able to confirm a lot of the wrongdoings through Hunter Biden’s testimony…there are many financial crimes that were committed by the Biden family. Hunter was asked about specific transactions with specific LLCs that I refer to as ‘shell companies.’ We got his answers on the record,” Comer says.
“The next phase now is to bring Hunter in for a public hearing and hear from the other Biden associates and let’s determine who the American people think is telling the truth. We have the bank records and the bank records don’t lie.”
“We still don’t know what the Biden family did to earn the $30 million dollars from our enemies around the world,” Comer says.
There will undoubtedly be more to glean from the transcript — Oversight has promised to share highlights on X/Twitter soon, and we'll be hitting some more of them here, as well.