James Comer blasted first son Hunter Biden for his apparent plans to skip this week’s public hearing, threatening that the GOP could make criminal recommendations.
The House Oversight Committee chairman floated the possibility after Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell spurned an invite to appear for the Wednesday hearing, dismissing it as a “carnival side-show.”
“I think that we’re at the point in the investigation where we need to hear the discrepancies,” Comer (R-Ky.) told Fox News’ “Sunday Morning Futures.” “I fully expect Hunter Biden to show up.”
“If he does not show up, then it’s not going to end well for the Bidens, because we have three witnesses … that have already testified under oath to significantly different stories as to what exactly the Biden influence peddling schemes were.”
Comer, 51, warned, “This is very serious because we’re at the point now of criminal referrals.”
The Kentucky Republican spearheading the three-panel impeachment inquiry implied it’s in Hunter Biden’s best interests to show up and refute the accusations peddled by his former business associates.
The other three witnesses scheduled to appear at the March 20 hearing are Hunter Biden’s former business confidants Devon Archer, Tony Bobulinski and Jason Galanis.
All three men have previously testified before the impeachment panel or one of its committees about the Biden family’s alleged influence peddling overseas.
Comer was coy about who might be on the receiving end of criminal referrals.
“We have spent a year investigating this. We have faced massive obstruction from the White House, from the Biden legal team, yet we have been able to get probably 80 percent of the information that we have requested,” he said. “We have accumulated lots of evidence of wrongdoing.”
“I can’t tell you a single legitimate business the Bidens had, other than they were influence peddling.”
President Biden and his son Hunter have vehemently disputed Comer’s characterizations of their family’s affairs. The president has flatly denied wrongdoing.
Hunter Biden sat for over six hours on Feb. 28 to deliver testimony before the panel. A transcript showed he was incredibly combative with Republicans.
Previously, the scandal-plagued first son passed on a scheduled Dec. 13, 2023 appearance and instead delivered an impromptu on-camera scolding of Republicans. He had demanded a public hearing.
After weeks of negotiations, his team agreed to the February testimony behind closed doors.
In a letter rejecting the March 20 appearance request for Hunter Biden, Lowell admonished Comer for basing his probe on “a patchwork of conspiracies spun by convicted liars,” accused Comer of giving him the invite without “prior communication,” and called the planned witnesses “discredited.”
Archer and Galanis are facing or serving prison time in connection with a scheme to defraud a Native American tribe.
Comer cited two payments President Biden allegedly received from his son’s overseas machinations as proof that the president benefited from his son’s business entanglements.
The first payment was $40,000 in September 2017 and the second was $200,000 in March 2018.
Comer previously claimed that the $40,000 was “laundered” funds from Chinese government-linked CEFC China Energy, which paid at least $6.1 million to Hunter and James Biden in 2017 and 2018.
The House GOP also connects the dots to China by noting that Hunter Biden moved money from Chinese companies to his Owasco firm in August 2017, then sent about $150,000 of that to Lion Hall Group, which James Biden controls.
Later that month James Biden’s wife Sara withdrew $50,000 from Lion Hall Group into the pair’s checking account. Days later, Sara Biden wrote a check to Joe Biden for $40,000 for a “loan repayment.”
As for the $200,000, Comer noted that James Biden transferred the money to Joe Biden on the same day that James received an identical amount — $200,000 — from Americore Health.
“So Joe Biden benefited to the tune of a quarter-of-a-million dollars. We have proven that Joe Biden lied over a dozen times,” Comer insisted.
Top White House officials have accused Comer of omitting key context and peddling false narratives about the Biden family.
Last week, White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations Ian Sams wrote a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) encouraging him to scrap the probe.
“It is clear the House Republican impeachment is over. It is obviously time to move on,” Sams wrote. “There is too much important work to be done for the American people to continue wasting time on this charade.”
Sams and other Biden allies have underscored House Republican apprehension about forging ahead with a full-blow impeachment of the president.
The Post contacted both Lowell and the White House for comment.
