The House lawmaker leading an investigation into President Biden said he is planning to send criminal referrals against Mr. Biden and others to the Justice Department as it appears increasingly unlikely that Republicans will vote to impeach him.
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer, Kentucky Republican, said criminal referrals would provide greater accountability for Mr. Biden than impeachment, given the long odds for a conviction in the Democratic-led Senate.
Lawmakers eager to hold Mr. Biden accountable for what they say was an influence-peddling scheme could have difficulty getting the narrowly led Republican House to provide enough votes to impeach the president.
“He wants to ensure accountability and follow the money,” a committee aide told The Washington Times. “[Mr. Comer] has been pretty clear that at the conclusion of this investigation, the committee is going to issue a report, it will contain criminal referrals, and he will likely introduce legislation as well to combat influence peddling.”
Republican congressional aides said a final committee report and the criminal referrals will include the president, family members and government officials investigated for months as part of Mr. Biden’s suspected involvement in his family’s lucrative business deals.
Mr. Comer is building a case to refer the president and others to the Justice Department for crimes such as influence peddling, failure to pay taxes, failure to register as a foreign lobbyist and, in the case of a slow-walked tax inquiry of Hunter Biden, interfering in a federal investigation.
House lawmakers have conducted months of closed-door interviews and collected thousands of pages of bank records and other documents that they say provide evidence that Mr. Biden was engaged in an influence-peddling scheme with his younger brother James Biden, his son Hunter Biden and several business associates. The family and associates pocketed more than $24 million from the operation. Witnesses said Mr. Biden would regularly phone into business meetings or stop by in person.
Investigators say Mr. Biden served as the deal closer for the family and traced $240,000 paid into his bank account by his brother, although the checks were labeled loan repayments.
Mr. Biden has denied involvement in the deals. Democrats have condemned what they call a politically motivated “sham inquiry” and say it has turned up no evidence of wrongdoing by the president.
The impeachment inquiry also examined a federal probe of Hunter Biden’s tax and gun crimes, centering on testimony from whistleblowers who said former Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf blocked them from fully investigating the president’s son.
A criminal referral is unlikely to go anywhere in the Justice Department, aides acknowledged, but the information would be ready for a new attorney general under a Trump administration if Mr. Biden loses to the former president in November.
“They can take this information gathered during the investigation and pursue criminal actions against the Bidens and other individuals for wrongdoing,” the aide said.
It wouldn’t be the first time Congress has asked the Justice Department to investigate a president for crimes.
The select committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol released a report in 2022 that included criminal referrals against Mr. Trump for inciting an insurrection.
Mr. Trump was indicted in August on felony charges for working to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The charges did not include insurrection.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.
• Mallory Wilson can be reached at mwilson@washingtontimes.com.
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