OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan has announced a timeline for testimony before the panel from David Weiss, the U.S. attorney-turned-special counsel who recently indicted first son Hunter Biden on a gun-related charge.
Jordan said on Sunday that Weiss will testify before the House on Oct. 18 during a Fox News interview.
“David Weiss has committed to come in front of the committee on Oct. 18, so we can look forward to that,” Jordan said, as reported by Newsmax.
Jordan also presented alleged evidence linking President Joe Biden to his son, who, according to his attorney George Mesires, served on the board of Ukrainian energy corporation Burisma Holdings from 2014 to 2019.
“You can boil this” question of Joe Biden’s alleged corruption “down to the Burisma situation,” Jordan noted further.
“Burisma, I think, captures it all. Hunter Biden gets put on the board; gets paid a lot of money. Fact No. 2: He wasn’t qualified to be on the board. Fact No. 3: The Burisma executives asked him, ‘Can you help us with the pressure we are facing?’ Fact No. 4: Joe Biden gets [Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin] fired — leverages American tax dollars to accomplish that,” he continued.
“And then what does the [Attorney General Merrick] Garland Justice Department do?” Jordan asked. “They try to sweep it under the rug, so much so that they allowed the statute of limitations to lapse for the most serious … felony tax concerns Hunter Biden had in 2014 and 2015. They let it lapse because those were the years that dealt with the Burisma income,” he noted further.
As the Ohio Republican’s committee prepares for Weiss’s testimony, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) announced late last week that President Biden’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is set for Sept. 28.
The developments come as the White House has appealed to allies in the “media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies.”
Newsmax added:
But, according to the New York Post’s reporting, this appears to be inaccurate. The Post reports that an FBI whistleblower has alleged that then-Vice President Biden “pushed for Shokin’s ouster because he was investigating gas company Burisma.” The whistleblower also suggested that “Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevsky claimed he had ‘bribed’ the Bidens for $5 million each — partly to get Shokin fired.”
After he left the vice presidency, Biden famously admitted to what appeared to be a “quid pro quo” during an event sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations. Biden said he had traveled to Kyiv on orders from then-President Barack Obama and demanded that the prosecutor be fired or he would withhold $1 billion in assistance.
NEHLS: “Joe Biden threatened the Ukrainian President and Prime Minister to fire Shokin — if that is not quid pro quo, sir, what is? — It's bribery, and it's impeachable. Are you gonna do something about it?”
“I bet you're not. And that's why you also need to be impeached” pic.twitter.com/zCtDDC22iq
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) September 20, 2023
Earlier this month, Ian Sams, a spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office, sent a memo to major news outlets asking that they “ramp up their scrutiny” of House Republicans “for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” the New York Post reported.
The memo, sent to major outlets including CNN, the New York Times and Fox News, comes after House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) announced an impeachment inquiry had begun into President Joe Biden after several committees claimed to have found incriminating evidence regarding alleged bribes and suspected enrichment from selling the “Biden brand.”
“Through our investigations, we have found that President Biden did lie to the American people about his own knowledge of his family’s foreign business dealings,” McCarthy alleged earlier this week, claiming that “these allegations paint a picture of a culture of corruption.”
Sams targeted select media outlets on Tuesday but then sent the memo to the White House press list the following day. But the instructions rankled several members of the media who complained that the administration was attempting to dictate editorial direction regarding impeachment, The Post added.
“They should be playing hardball, and instead, what they’re doing is bitching about the media,” a White House reporter who regularly attends briefings told the outlet.
“I don’t think the media likes being told what to do. I think it’s going to backfire,” the reporter predicted, according to The Post. “It seems to say to me that they believe the media will just do what [the White House] tells them. It’s a terrible look for the administration.”
