The House lawmaker leading an investigation into President Biden said he’s planning to send criminal referrals against Mr. Biden and others to the Justice Department as it appears increasingly unlikely Republicans will vote to impeach him.
House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer said criminal referrals would provide greater accountability for Mr. Biden than impeachment given the very long odds for a conviction in the Democrat-led Senate.
Republicans eager to hold Mr. Biden accountable for what they believe was an influence-peddling scheme also face the real prospect that the narrowly-led GOP House will not provide the votes to impeach the president.
“He wants to ensure accountability and follow the money,” a panel 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.”
GOP aides said a final report by the Oversight panel and the criminal referrals will target the president, family members and other government officials probed in the months-long inquiry into the president’s 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 including influence peddling, failure to pay taxes, failure to register as a foreign lobbyist, and, in the case of Hunter Biden‘s slow-walked federal tax probe, 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 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 out of the operation and witnesses say Mr. Biden would regularly phone into business meetings or stop by in person.
Lawmakers say he 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 any involvement in the deals and Democrats have condemned the probe as a politically motivated “sham inquiry,” and they said it has turned up no evidence of wrongdoing by Mr. Biden.
The impeachment inquiry also examined the years-long federal probe into Hunter Biden‘s tax and gun crimes, centering on testimony from whistleblowers who say former Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf blocked them from fully investigating the president’s son.
It’s unlikely a criminal referral will go anywhere in the Biden-led 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 asked the Justice Department to investigate a president for crimes.
The select committee that investigated the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol released a report in 2022 that included criminal referrals for former President 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.