OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is angling to become Speaker should the GOP win back control of the chamber in the November midterms.
And ahead of anticipated victories, the California Republican has begun to lay out his and his party’s agenda.
Republicans are already planning to launch a series of oversight investigations into the Biden administration, including — according to McCarthy — the president’s scandal-ridden son, Hunter Biden.
In an interview last week with the New York Post, McCarthy vowed that the GOP would use subpoena power in an attempt to learn what U.S. intelligence agencies knew about the infamous laptop Hunter abandoned in 2019 at a computer repair shop in Delaware — the contents of which were partially revealed just ahead of the 2020 election by The Post but which were either ignored by most other media, censored by social media platforms, or labeled Russian misinformation.
In addition, McCarthy said his party will want to know more about what the intelligence community knew of the first son’s foreign business activities while his dad served as Barack Obama’s vice president, The Daily Wire reported.
McCarthy told The Post “we will use the subpoena” if the intelligence agencies refuse to voluntarily cooperate with any probes, adding that in the days before the election, more than 50 current and former intelligence officials signed an open letter attesting that they believed the laptop information was planted by Russia.
“You would want to ask these individuals first of all, ‘Would you still sign the letter today, and who asked you to sign the letter and why did you sign the letter, and what information did you have prior?’” McCarthy told The Post. “Why did you feel comfortable — especially with your own reputations — that you would sign that letter? Was it someone from the [Biden] campaign who asked, or was it people in the intel community?”
“I think these questions have to be answered,” McCarthy added. “You cannot allow an intel community to utilize their name in an improper way without correcting.”
The minority leader’s remarks came after FBI Director Christopher Wray was pressed by GOP lawmakers last week over reports that a whistleblower at the bureau accused ranking officials of downplaying or dismissing incriminating evidence on Hunter Biden before the election.
“I want to be very careful not to interfere with ongoing personnel matters,” Wray said in response to one line of questioning. “I should say that when I read the letter that describes the kinds of things that you are talking about, I found it deeply troubling.”
“I am going to give [Wray] the benefit of the doubt at this moment in time,” McCarthy said. “We are going to ask the tough questions and if we don’t get the honest answers, there’s consequences.”
The Daily Wire noted further:
The report added that McCarthy said that Republicans have already sent more than 500 preservation letters, which notify entities not to destroy evidence due to upcoming legal proceedings, in anticipation of the investigations they plan to launch.
Earlier this year, former Attorney General William Barr slammed the former U.S. intelligence officials who signed the letter dismissing the Hunter Biden laptop story during the 2020 election.
“They’re political whores,” Barr said bluntly. “And it was wrong for them even to put out a letter because they didn’t know the facts. They had zero information; they did it as a political ploy to help Biden win the election.”
“The arrival on the US political scene of emails purportedly belonging to Vice President Biden’s son Hunter, much of it related to his time serving on the Board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma, has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” the letter read.
In his interview with The Post, McCarthy said of intelligence community officials, “They should come in and talk to us. You’d want to ask these individuals what did they know and when.
“People can come in and talk to us and answer the questions. If that’s not the case, there are times we will use the subpoena as well,” he added.
