CNN
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Rep. James Comer, in one of his first steps as House Oversight Chairman, seeks information from the Treasury Department about the Biden family’s financial dealings and calls out a handful of ex-Twitter executives to testify at a public hearing.
The new set of letters from the committee comes as House Republicans seek to ease their investigative powers and deliver on their promises to delve into Biden family finances and alleged political influence over tech companies after Twitter temporarily removed a 2020 story about Hunter Biden and his laptop.
“Now that the Democrats no longer have a one-party rule in Washington, the oversight and the accountability are coming,” Comer said of his panel’s investigation into Hunter Biden and the Biden family’s business dealings. “This investigation is a top priority for House Republicans in the 118th Congress.”
Comer asked Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to provide her panel with banking activity reports for Hunter Biden, President Biden’s brother James Biden, and several associates of the Biden family and their related companies.
“The Oversight and Accountability Committee is investigating President Biden’s involvement in his family’s foreign business practices and international influence peddling schemes,” Comer wrote to Yellen.
Comer attempted to acquire these banking activity reports, known as suspicious activity reports, on several occasions when Republicans were in the minority, but were unsuccessful. Comer said he only saw two and did not reveal the source of this information.
Comer has previously pointed to banking activity reports — known as suspicious activity reports — as evidence of potential wrongdoing by Joe Biden’s family members. But such reports are not conclusive and do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing. Every year, financial institutions file millions of suspicious activity reports and few lead to law enforcement investigations.
The White House accused Republicans of engaging in “political stunts” following Comer’s request on Wednesday.
“In their first week as a governing majority, House Republicans have taken no meaningful action to fight inflation and cut costs for Americans, but they are jumping out the door with political stunts driven by the most extreme MAGA members of their caucus in an effort to draw attention to Fox News,” Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel’s Office, said in a statement. “The president will continue to focus on the important issues the American people want their leaders to work on together, and we hope House Republicans will join in.”
Comer is also seeking communications within the Treasury Department, its Financial Crimes Enforcement Division, and the White House regarding these family members and related businesses and associates, all of whom he wants to remove by May 25. January.
The letters to former Twitter officials offer a path to Comer’s investigative timeline ahead. Letters to former Head of Legal, Policy and Fiduciary Vijaya Gadde; former Chief Trust and Safety Officer Yoel Roth; and former Deputy General Counsel James Baker are calling on the trio to appear in public hearing the week of February 6. They come after Comer sent a series of letters in December asking for their testimony.
“Your presence is needed because of your role in suppressing Americans’ access to Biden family information on Twitter shortly before the 2020 election,” each of the letters to former Twitter employees states.
Republicans have seized the so-called Twitter files as evidence of government censorship, though none of the posts released so far show the FBI explicitly telling Twitter to delete a story that included material from a computer laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. An FBI agent at the heart of the controversy as well as several federal officials and tech executives have all denied such an order existed, CNN previously reported.
Roth, meanwhile, has publicly stated that the Hunter Biden story appears to be the product of a hack and leak operation, but he has denied personally attempting to censor the story.
“It is widely reported that I personally led the removal of the Hunter Biden story. It’s not true. This is absolutely, unequivocally wrong,” Roth told tech journalist Kara Swisher in a podcast interview last year.
Comer’s demands come as he and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan pledged to investigate the federal government’s influence on tech companies.
In an interview with CNN earlier this week, Comer suggested court staff could attend some of his committee’s interviews if there are common areas of interest, such as with Twitter.
“There is some overlap, but that won’t be a problem for Jim and me,” Comer said in the interview. “He knows who we’re bringing in. We know who he’s bringing in.”
This story was updated with additional developments on Wednesday.
