Biden family received up to $30 mln from foreigners: GOP probe
The majority of US citizens, according to a recent poll, think that President Joe Biden and his family accepted contributions from abroad in order to influence White House policies.
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US President Joe Biden boards with his son Hunter Air Force One as he departs from Delaware Air National Guard base in New Castle Delaware on February 4, 2023. (AFP)
The Biden family may have accepted up to $30 million in unlawful payments from foreigners, as per new bank records, according to James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
"We have more bank records coming in but we’re gonna exceed $10 million this week but I think we’ll get up to $20-$30 million," Comer told a US broadcaster.
"This is going to be hard for Biden to explain, this is not going to go away, and I think eventually the mainstream media [...] will turn on Joe Biden and start asking the real questions: 'What did your family do to receive all this money?'" he said, charging the Bidens with engaging in bribery, influence peddling, and money laundering.
Comer has named nine members of the Biden family as having allegedly received foreign income, including the first son Hunter, the President's brother James, his brother's wife Sara, the widow of the President's late son Hallie, and Hunter's ex-wife Kathleen Buhle and his current wife Melissa Cohen Biden.
According to reports, the committee received the data through records that Comer had subpoenaed from four banks: Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, and Cathay Bank.
The changes come in response to a recent Trafalgar Group/Convention of States Action poll, which found that 53.3% of respondents thought the Biden family received foreign funding to influence Washington policy.
The poll was conducted amid an investigation by Republican lawmakers into alleged multi-million dollar payments made by the Ukrainian energy company Burisma to then-Vice President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, during Barack Obama's presidency in return for supporting the ouster of a Ukrainian prosecutor looking into the business.
The charges have been denied by the POTUS numerous times.
Prior to the survey, US Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene reported that Burisma had allegedly paid Joe Biden and his first son a total of $10 million to assist in ending an investigation into the company by former Ukrainian Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
Read: US congresswoman introduces impeachment articles against Biden
After the Obama administration withdrew loan guarantees in an effort to put pressure on the government to fire the chief prosecutor, Shokin was ousted by the Ukrainian Parliament in March 2016.
According to Greene, he had been looking into charges of tax fraud, money laundering, and corruption against Burisma executive Mykola Zlochevsky.
She asserted that Hunter was appointed to Burisma's board in order to "make the problems go away" in relation to Shokin's probe.
In order to terminate Shokin and put an end to his investigation into the business, she added that the owner of Burisma allegedly gave Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each.
Comer's committee sent a memo last month regarding the ongoing congressional inquiry into the Biden family's "influence peddling and business schemes."
According to the document, the Biden family and their business partners set up a network of more than 20 companies, the majority of which were limited liability firms founded in Delaware and Washington, DC, while Joe Biden served as vice president.
The panel promised to provide further information regarding the Bidens' murky dealings, which became public in particular after a US newspaper published a blockbuster article in 2020 about Hunter's "laptop from hell," which the younger Biden left at a Delaware repair shop.
