Hunter Biden's decision to defy a congressional subpoena for his deposition swayed several Republicans who were on the fence about voting for an impeachment inquiry into his father, President Joe Biden, to approve the House measure, Rep. Andy Biggs, a member of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees, told Newsmax Thursday.
"I'm talking to some of the people who were a little bit uncertain and I think Hunter Biden's failing to show up [made it] pretty obvious to them that we needed to have this extra step, this extra strength to get cooperation," the Arizona Republican told Newsmax's "Wake Up America."
The president's son Wednesday defied a congressional subpoena to appear for a closed-door deposition before Republican investigators, saying outside the U.S. Capitol that he will only testify in public because he believes private testimony could be manipulated.
"The idea that because you were a Biden, that you were above a congressional subpoena and that you want to dictate how a committee holds its hearings is just, well, it's just absolutely some of the most arrogant stuff you'd ever see," Biggs told Newsmax.
He pointed out that Donald Trump Jr. was deposed three times under subpoena and his sister, Ivanka Trump, also testified privately, but "No, not Hunter Biden."
"We have many other people that we need to get to and we want to get those subpoenas issued and done right and we know we've anticipated we would have to go to court," said Biggs. "Talking to my colleagues, they said, 'Yeah, that's reprehensible, and we're going to go, have to go ahead and vote for that impeachment inquiry where [we] were a little doubtful before."
Biggs, a member of both committees that would have questioned Biden, said his first question would have been about the $5 million funding from Northern International Capital Holdings, a CEFC-affiliated entity linked to the Chinese government, and the subsequent payments to Hudson West III, Hunter Biden’s joint venture with a Chinese national, and another of Hunter Biden's companies, Owasco, P.C.
"How much money did his father get from the $5 million?" Biggs said he would have asked Biden.
"Then I would have gone through everything from Russia and Ukraine because we have documentation and I would have demonstrated that with documentation and asked him to comment on those documents," said Biggs.
However, the investigators anticipated that Biden would have invoked the Fifth Amendment, considering his indictments on tax charges, he added.
"These are tax evasion indictments, so if you're getting money, and you're not paying taxes on that money, even if it's licit or illicit, you're going to be under the gun," said Biggs. "That may be one of the reasons that the indictments were timed the way they were because this was well announced and well known that he was supposed to come in and testify. "
Biggs also rejected claims from the White House that it has no evidence against the president.
"There are mountains of evidence," he said. "My problem is, I think we have too much evidence and it muddies the waters. So we have literally thousands, tens of thousands of pages of bank records."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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