Jamie Raskin Says Republicans Have ‘Disproven’ Biden Corruption Claims | EUROtoday

In his quest to uncover proof of corruption by President Joe Biden, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has solely managed to undermine his key allegations towards the president, in line with the committee’s prime Democrat.

“Chairman Comer’s investigation has conclusively disproven the Republican allegations against President Biden,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) mentioned Monday in an announcement accompanying a report summarizing the committee’s work thus far this 12 months.

It’s a scathing doc that portrays the Republican investigation as a clear effort to create a false equivalence between Biden and former President Donald Trump, who faces 4 prison trials for conduct throughout and after his presidency.

The most important corruption allegations towards Biden are that he participated in his son’s enterprise offers with international nationals and that as vp he twisted U.S. international coverage to learn a Ukrainian fuel firm that employed his son as board member. House Republicans have mentioned they could launch an impeachment inquiry towards Joe Biden primarily based on the Oversight Committee’s materials.

“Mounting evidence reveals that then-Vice President Joe Biden was ‘the brand’ that his family sold around the world to enrich the Bidens,” a spokesperson for Comer mentioned Monday. “Then-Vice President Biden spoke over 20 times by speakerphone with Hunter Biden’s foreign business associates, dined with corrupt oligarchs who funneled millions to Hunter Biden, had coffee with one of his son’s associates in Beijing, and may have engaged in a bribery scheme.”

Earlier this 12 months, Comer and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) uncovered an FBI file indicating {that a} trusted supply spoke to a Ukrainian oligarch who claimed to have bribed Joe and Hunter Biden. The supply mentioned the declare was attribute of braggadocio amongst post-Soviet businessmen; Raskin has mentioned FBI officers advised him they assessed the fabric and located it not credible sufficient for a full investigation. (The bureau has declined to publicize its evaluation.)

Devon Archer, a former enterprise associate of Hunter Biden’s, gave Republicans their greatest materials. He advised the committee that Hunter Biden used his title and connections in Washington as a “brand” that could possibly be beneficial to potential purchasers. And Archer mentioned Hunter Biden would often put his dad on speaker cellphone once they had been within the firm of enterprise associates. As a consequence, Comer and different Republicans declare the elder Biden routinely lied each time he mentioned he had no involvement in his son’s work.

But in line with the transcriptArcher mentioned the conversations he witnessed weren’t about enterprise and that he by no means noticed Joe Biden assist his son’s enterprise or Hunter Biden use his father to affect coverage. Archer additionally mentioned he had no information of the Bidens receiving bribes from Ukrainian oligarchs, and that he was not conscious of any effort by Hunter Biden to make use of his dad to get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired.

The latter declare ― that the Bidens corrupted U.S. coverage towards Ukraine ― has been repeatedly debunked, together with in sworn testimony by State Department officers. Those officers and ethics specialists did say, nonetheless, that Hunter Biden’s international dealmaking created the looks of a battle of curiosity when his father was vp.

Trump’s efforts to drive Ukraine into saying a sham investigation of the Bidens led to his first impeachment in 2019. Raskin mentioned Republicans had been pursuing the Ukrainian corruption allegation out of “humiliating subservience” to Trump.

“The voluminous evidence they have gathered, including thousands of pages of bank records and suspicious activity reports and hours of testimony from witnesses, overwhelmingly demonstrates no wrongdoing by President Biden and further debunks Republicans’ conspiracy theories,” Raskin mentioned.