{"id":413,"date":"2024-02-01T00:07:57","date_gmt":"2024-02-01T00:07:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/01\/another-impeachment-witness-tells-the-gop-what-it-doesnt-want-to-hear\/"},"modified":"2024-02-01T00:07:57","modified_gmt":"2024-02-01T00:07:57","slug":"another-impeachment-witness-tells-the-gop-what-it-doesnt-want-to-hear","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/2024\/02\/01\/another-impeachment-witness-tells-the-gop-what-it-doesnt-want-to-hear\/","title":{"rendered":"Another impeachment witness tells the GOP what it doesn\u2019t want to hear"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

While the House Homeland Security Committee was (slowly) marking up articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the (slow) effort to build a case for impeaching President Biden continued apace.<\/p>\n

Eric Schwerin, a former business associate of the president\u2019s son, Hunter Biden, appeared Tuesday on Capitol Hill for sworn closed-door testimony before congressional investigators. The appearance triggered the usual response from right-wing media \u2014 new evidence emerges of Biden\u2019s culpability!! \u2014 but the more important story is a quieter one.<\/p>\n

Once again, an associate of Hunter Biden\u2019s asserted explicitly and under penalty of perjury that the president was not involved in his son\u2019s business.<\/p>\n

If you are just tuning in \u2014 and who can blame you? \u2014 the Republican effort to impeach the president generally centers on two issues. (They\u2019ve attempted to build more than two allegations, mind you; these two are just the ones on which they seem to think they\u2019ll have the best shot.) One is that Biden, as vice president, acted on behalf of his son\u2019s employer to change policy in Ukraine \u2014 an allegation that has been debunked multiple times. The other is that Joe Biden was intertwined with his son\u2019s business partners more widely, benefiting from deals Hunter Biden made with individuals, including from China.<\/p>\n

House Republicans have done a good job detailing the scope and timing of deals. They have done a remarkably poor job tying them to the president.<\/p>\n

One way they\u2019ve tried to do so is by misrepresenting money that Joe Biden received. The president\u2019s brother, James Biden, and Hunter Biden (through his corporate account) made payments to Biden in the years before Biden became president. But those payments were demonstrably repayments for loans Joe Biden had extended, including so that Hunter could buy a truck.<\/p>\n

The other way is by constructing a sweeping, flimsy set of circumstantial evidence. That Hunter Biden would sporadically put incoming calls from his father on speaker phone while around business partners. That Joe Biden had met his business partners or that Hunter Biden had brought partners to dinners that the then-vice president attended. That Hunter Biden told his partners that his last name was their best selling point, which \u2014 yeah. That has been understood for a long time.<\/p>\n

The result is that Republicans and their media allies will pick out claims from Devon Archer, Hunter Biden\u2019s former partner, in which he talks about those phone calls or how he understood that the \u201cbrand\u201d he and Hunter Biden were leveraging was their perceived clout in D.C.<\/p>\n

What they do not talk about, though, are other answers from Archer. Like:<\/p>\n

Q: In fact, Hunter Biden never asked his father to take official actions on behalf of his business partners?<\/div>\n
Archer: He did not. He did not ask him \u2014 to my knowledge, I never saw him say, do anything for any particular business.<\/div>\n

Or:<\/p>\n

Q: It is still true that you are not aware that Hunter Biden ever discussed policy with his father, discussed business with his father, influenced American policy for purposes of his business or otherwise caused the Vice President or asked the Vice President to do anything improper, right?<\/div>\n
Archer: That\u2019s my understanding.<\/div>\n

Or, when presented with a 2014 email from Hunter Biden about an upcoming trip from the vice president:<\/p>\n

Archer: [H]e\u2019s saying that, you know, we can\u2019t \u2014 I can\u2019t guide my guy, you know, I can\u2019t guide my father in what he\u2019s going to do on this trip, but let\u2019s get credit for it.<\/div>\n

We know those answers because, unlike many interviews, the transcript was made public. We also got the transcript from an interview with Kevin Morris, a friend of Hunter Biden\u2019s who loaned the president\u2019s son an enormous amount of money. That, too, undercut Republican arguments.<\/p>\n

A transcript of Schwerin\u2019s testimony has not been produced (though, given precedent here, it is very likely that it won\u2019t be). But through a person with direct knowledge of the transcribed interview who wasn\u2019t authorized to speak publicly, The Washington Post obtained quotes from Schwerin\u2019s prepared testimony that directly addresses the question of Joe Biden\u2019s involvement.<\/p>\n

For example:<\/p>\n

Schwerin: I am not aware of any financial transactions or compensation that Vice President Biden received related to business conducted by any of his family members or their associates nor any involvement by him in their businesses. None.<\/div>\n

Or:<\/p>\n

Schwerin: I cannot recall any requests for Vice President Biden to take any official action on behalf of any of Hunter\u2019s clients or his business deals \u2014 foreign or domestic. In fact, I am not aware of any role that Vice President Biden, as a public official or a private citizen, had in any of Hunter\u2019s business activities. None.<\/div>\n

And so on.<\/p>\n

The takeaway from Schwerin\u2019s testimony at the GOP-friendly New York Post? That Schwerin did Biden\u2019s taxes in the years before he was president without being paid.<\/p>\n

Again, the lack of transcripts provided by Republicans conducting the investigation makes it difficult to know whether there are similar examples of witnesses contradicting the idea that Joe Biden was involved in his son\u2019s business. In December, though, USA Today reported that a trustee for one of James Biden\u2019s business partners \u2014 a health-care company called Americore \u2014 told investigators that \u201cshe possessed no knowledge that the president was directly involved in those dealings.\u201d Money from Americore that went to James Biden was apparently used to repay the larger of the two loans his brother had extended.<\/p>\n

The FBI is fastidious about transcripts, one of which was provided to House investigators: a December 2020 interview with Hunter Biden\u2019s former associate Rob Walker. Like Archer\u2019s and Schwerin\u2019s testimony, it carries the threat of criminal sanction for false statements.<\/p>\n

Walker was asked about an email suggesting that Joe Biden would get a cut of a proposed deal. His response?<\/p>\n

Walker: I certainly never was thinking at any time that, ah \u2026 the V. P. was a part of anything we were doin\u2019.<\/div>\n

Walker was deposed by Republican investigators last week, as well. He offered a statement at the outset:<\/p>\n

Walker: To be clear, President Biden \u2014 while in office, or as a private citizen \u2014 was never involved in any of the business activities we pursued. Any statement of the contrary is simply false.<\/div>\n

It is certainly possible that each of these men is offering false testimony for which they might later be charged. In the case of Archer, who in addition to speaking to House investigators also sat down for a friendly interview with Tucker Carlson, that seems like more of a stretch, but: regardless. It\u2019s possible.<\/p>\n

We must wait for that, though, against the lack of evidence to the contrary. Beyond loan repayments, there\u2019s no evidence of Biden benefiting from Hunter Biden\u2019s work. The case is cobbled together from circumstance, often using claims that are themselves wobbly or viewed as significant only when viewed through red-tinted lenses.<\/p>\n

On Tuesday evening, after Schwerin testified, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) appeared on Fox News.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of the people that we brought in for depositions,\u201d Comer said, \u201cthey have a hard time remembering the bad things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Maybe. Or maybe Comer and his allies have a different problem.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

This post appeared first on The Washington Post<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

While the House Homeland Security Committee was (slowly) marking up articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the (slow) effort to build a case for impeaching President Biden continued apace. Eric Schwerin, a former business associate of the president\u2019s son, Hunter Biden, appeared Tuesday on Capitol Hill for sworn closed-door testimony before congressional […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":414,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-413","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}