PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are laying the groundwork for a slew of investigations of the Biden administration, including of Hunter Biden, the Afghanistan pullout and the origins of COVID-19.
Preparing for a possible takeover of Congress after the midterm elections, the committee has sent the document preservation requests to the administration, said Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the committee’s ranking Republican.
Mr. Comer, who described President Biden’s son Hunter Biden as a “national security threat,” said the committee wants to be ready to go.
“We just don’t want the administration to say, ‘Well, we didn’t keep this or we lost track of that.’ The administration knows exactly what the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee are going to be requesting in January when we take the gavel,” he told The Washington Times.
“We’re not going to wait around in January to start trying to get documents together. We’re going to have our hearings ready to go in January,” he said. “So, it’s imperative that the administration preserve the documents. We’ve requested them. They’re unwilling to give them to us now.”
Mr. Comer noted that if the GOP is in the majority in January, the GOP will have subpoena power on the committee instead of their current circumstances in the minority.
Hunter Biden is high on their list of investigations they want to tackle.
“We believe Hunter Biden’s a national security threat. We’ve said that from the very beginning, we’ve been doing a lot of probing on his artwork,” said Mr. Comer. “So we have a lot of questions there that we’re going to really accelerate once we become the majority.”
The younger Biden has been selling his artwork at a New York City gallery for tens of thousands of dollars to anonymous sellers, sparking suspicion that the buyers may be attempting to buy influence. The White House claims it does not know the names of the buyers and the gallerists will not reveal their identities.
According to Mr. Comer, the committee primarily plans to launch investigations and hearings on anything that has harmed the taxpayer, starting with inflation and overspending by the federal government.
“There need to be better guardrails on the spending. We’re going to be focused on the border, the lack of border security and how much that’s cost the taxpayers. I don’t think people realize how much the taxpayers are paying every day for housing of illegals transportation of illegals, health care for illegals,” Mr. Comer said.
The administration so far has not cooperated with the committee’s Republicans. The unanswered requests include a full account of how many Afghans were relocated to the U.S., what level of vetting took place and how much the program costs taxpayers.
The committee, if the GOP takes control, will also focus on the origins of COVID-19 and its relation to the U.S. taxpayer research that was done in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology, a suspected origin site of the pandemic.
The Republicans are ready to call in Dr. Anthony Fauci to answer questions, said Mr. Comer.
“We’re going to continue to dive into that,” he said. “What else did Dr. Fauci know about how much money actually went there? Has it stopped? What continues to happen in that lab? Are we working with any other foreign countries or any other Chinese labs with respect to mad science type of research that Dr. Fauci was leading?”
• Kerry Picket can be reached at kpicket@washingtontimes.com.
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