{"id":7525,"date":"2023-03-14T21:29:12","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T02:29:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=7525"},"modified":"2023-03-14T21:29:34","modified_gmt":"2023-03-15T02:29:34","slug":"house-oversight-chair-comer-quietly-subpoenas-bank-records-for-hunter-biden-business-associates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=7525","title":{"rendered":"House Oversight Chair Comer quietly subpoenas bank records for Hunter Biden business associates"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

House Oversight Chairman James Comer\u2002<\/a>has quietly subpoenaed Bank of America asking for records relating to three of Hunter Biden\u2019s<\/a> business associates, the committee\u2019s ranking Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, disclosed in a letter sent to Comer on Sunday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subpoena was broad and called for \u201call financial records\u201d spanning 14 years, beginning in 2009, according to a copy of the letter obtained by CNN. Bank of America has since turned over a considerable number of materials in compliance with the subpoena, a source familiar with the communications told CNN.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The subpoena specifically targets US citizen John Robinson \u201cRob\u201d Walker and other associates of President Joe Biden\u2019s son, Hunter, who formed a \u201ca joint venture\u201d with executives of CEFC China Energy, a now-bankrupt Chinese energy conglomerate, according to the letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bank of America declined to comment. CNN has also reached out to an email associated with Walker.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sweeping subpoena marks an escalation in Comer\u2019s investigation into the Biden family\u2019s business dealings. The Kentucky Republican has said accessing financial information for the Biden family and its business associates is a top priority as he seeks to investigate alleged influence peddling, particularly surrounding any of the family\u2019s foreign business deals. The president has denied any involvement in his son\u2019s overseas business dealings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A House Oversight GOP spokesperson told CNN in a statement that the purpose of Raskin\u2019s letter was to \u201cget ahead of the information the Oversight Committee is receiving in its investigation of the Biden family\u2019s influence peddling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move comes after attorneys for Hunter Biden recently embraced a more aggressive strategy to push back against attacks from Republicans. Last month, his attorneys fired off a spate of letters urging state and federal agencies to investigate several individuals involved in disseminating the contents of his laptop, which has been the basis for a slew of GOP attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A spokesperson for Hunter Biden\u2019s legal team said Monday, \u201cRep. Comer continues to pursue far-fetched and already-disproven conspiracy theories about the Biden family,\u201d and accused Comer of \u201cdoing the bidding of former President Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raskin criticizes Comer in the letter for not giving Democratic members standard notice before the subpoena was issued, arguing they were only given visibility a few hours prior rather than the standard committee practice of alerting the minority of a subpoena 48 hours in advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Maryland Democrat also characterizes the subpoena as a \u201croving congressional inquisition into the affairs of at least one private American citizen,\u201d given that it called for the production of \u201cthousands of pages of Mr. Walker\u2019s private financial information, including statements of his and his wife\u2019s joint checking account for a decade\u201d \u2013 something Raskin argues goes \u201cwell beyond any business deal with Hunter Biden or CEFC.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Claims about Oversight GOP and Trump\u2019s counsel<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raskin also claims in his letter that committee Democrats are increasingly learning about new levels of cooperation between former President Donald Trump\u2019s counsel, Patrick Strawbridge, and oversight Republicans regarding a decision to stop pursuing information and materials relating to foreign spending at Trump-owned properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In April 2019, the House Oversight Committee \u2013 run then by Democrats \u2013 subpoenaed Trump\u2019s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA for financial information relating to the Trump Organization. The investigation specifically was focused on whether foreign governments were spending money at Trump-owned properties in order to curry favor with the administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That investigation was ongoing while Democrats were in the majority. However, on January 19, 2023, after Republicans took control of the House and the Oversight panel, Strawbridge allegedly emailed Mazars\u2019 counsel informing the firm that GOP committee members had given the Trump organization assurances that the panel would cease its requests for documents, according to a direct quote from the email included in Raskin\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI do not know the status of Mazars [sic] production, but my understanding is that the Committee has no interest in forcing Mazars to complete it and is willing to release it from further obligations under the settlement agreement,\u201d Strawbridge\u2019s email read, according to Raskin\u2019s letter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raskin writes that Strawbridge later told Mazars that \u201cthis direction had been provided to him, twice, by the Acting General Counsel of the House of Representatives, in his capacity as counsel to the Committee.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe accusation by Ranking Member Raskin is completely unfounded and untrue. There has been no coordination or discussion with anyone from the Committee\u2019s majority with anyone about the Mazars documents,\u201d a House GOP committee spokesperson said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CNN has reached out to Mazars and Strawbridge, the Trump attorney, for comment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raskin argues in his letter that the decision to stop asking Mazars to continue producing documents in relation to its investigation into the Trump Organization\u2019s ties to foreign governments is at odds with Comer\u2019s decision to subpoena Bank of America as part of its investigation into Hunter Biden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou appear to have engaged in these efforts to prevent the production of evidence of former President Trump\u2019s misconduct during his time in office while simultaneously issuing an invasive and overbroad subpoena to private individuals as part of an investigation targeting the business dealings of family members of President Biden who have never held public office,\u201d Raskin writes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

edition.cnn<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

House Oversight Chairman James Comer\u2002has quietly subpoenaed Bank of America asking for records relating to three of Hunter Biden\u2019s business associates, the committee\u2019s ranking Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, disclosed in a letter sent to Comer on Sunday. The subpoena was broad and called for \u201call financial records\u201d spanning 14 years, beginning in 2009, according to a copy of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7526,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2447,3316],"class_list":["post-7525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-comer","tag-records"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7527,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7525\/revisions\/7527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}