Having gained majority, GOP pushes for Hunter Biden probe

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Republicans doubled their efforts this week to use their newly acquired authority to look into the Biden administration and, in particular, the President's son, despite gaining a thin House majority. The White House, however, has grown more confident in light of the midterm results after months of planning.

Democrats and President Joe Biden's advisors believe that voters punished the GOP for its reliance on conspiracy theories and Donald Trump-inspired lies during the 2020 election because Republicans won with much smaller margins than was predicted.

They see it as support for the administration's strategy to focus on legislative successes and maintain them in the run-up to the midterm elections, as opposed to Trump-aligned candidates whose complaints about the President's son played to their most ardent supporters but were too technical for the average American.

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The GOP's majority in the House is anticipated to be the narrowest in twenty years, and the Democrats kept control of the Senate. “If you look back, we picked up seats in New York, New Jersey, California,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist and public affairs executive.

“These were not voters coming to the polls because they wanted Hunter Biden investigated — far from it. They were coming to the polls because they were upset about inflation. They’re upset about gas prices. They’re upset about what’s going on with the war in Ukraine.”

However, House Republicans renewed long-standing grievances about what they call a politicized law enforcement agency and a bombshell corruption case that Democrats and the media chose to ignore at their first news conference after winning the majority by talking about presidential son Hunter Biden and the Justice Department.

“From their first press conference, these congressional Republicans made clear that they’re going to do one thing in this new Congress, which is investigations, and they’re doing this for political payback for Biden’s efforts on an agenda that helps working people,” said Kyle Herrig, the founder of the Congressional Integrity Project, a newly relaunched, multimillion-dollar effort by Democratic strategists to counter the onslaught of House GOP probes.

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Hunter Biden in Ukraine 

Republicans in Congress had promised to release a wealth of new information over the past week, but all they have so far done is rehash complaints that have been made about Hunter Biden's business dealings for a number of years, going all the way back to Trump conspiracy theories.

In 2014, around the time Biden, the vice president at the time, was assisting with the Obama administration's foreign policy in Ukraine, Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma. However, they did not provide proof that the hiring affected US policies, and they did not hold Joe Biden accountable for any wrongdoing. 

For the past year, Republican lawmakers and their staff have been investigating messages and financial transactions discovered on a laptop once owned by Hunter Biden. They have long talked about sending congressional subpoenas to foreign companies that did business with him, and they recently hired James Mandolfo, a former federal prosecutor, to serve as the Oversight Committee's general counsel and help with the investigation.

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Now, regardless of how small their majority may be, Republicans will have the ability to follow through on subpoenas.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre criticized the GOP's emphasis on investigations as being "on-brand" thinking. “They said they were going to fight inflation, they said they were going to make that a priority, then they get the majority and their top priority is actually not focusing on the American family, but focusing on the president’s family,” she said.

Even some newly elected Republicans are pushing back against the idea.

“The top priority is to deal with inflation and the cost of living. ... What I don’t want to see is what we saw in the Trump administration, where Democrats went after the president and the administration incessantly,” Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York said on CNN.

A Delaware grand jury has recently heard testimony regarding the federal investigation into Hunter Biden's taxes and foreign business dealings. While he never held a position on the presidential campaign or in the White House, his membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have long raised questions about whether he traded on his father’s public service.