Comer warns of possible new impeachment offense in response to White House rebuffs

House Oversight Chairman James Comer has responded to President Biden’s rebuff of the invitation to testify in the impeachment inquiry and warned the White House’s conduct could constitute a new impeachable offense.

“[The] White House’s continued hostility towards Congress’s prerogative to investigate these matters constitutes obstruction and contempt of Congress—which are themselves impeachable offenses,” signaling a possible new avenue in the House’s wide-ranging impeachment inquiry.

You can read the letter below:

Comer sent the letter to Biden’s Special Counsel Richard Sauber on Wednesday and reiterated several requests previously sent to the White House urging production of documents and answers to key questions.

On Monday, Sauber sent a letter to Comer informing him the President would not appear for public testimony and declared the impeachment inquiry “over.”

"Your Committee’s purported 'impeachment inquiry' has succeeded only in turning up abundant evidence that, in fact, the President has done nothing wrong," Sauber wrote.

"Yet rather than acknowledge this reality, your March 28, 2024, letter contains the same litany of false allegations that have been repeatedly debunked and refuted by the very witnesses you have called before your Committee and the many documents you have obtained," he added.

Comer pushed back on the White House’s letter earlier this week.

"The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in the Biden family. Like his son, Hunter Biden, President Biden is refusing to testify in public about the Bidens’ corrupt influence peddling. This comes as no surprise since President Biden continues to lie about his relationships with his son’s business partners, even denying they exist when his son said under oath during a deposition that they did," Comer said in a statement earlier this week.  

"It is unfortunate President Biden is unwilling to answer questions before the American people and refuses to answer the very simple, straightforward questions we included in the invitation. Why is it so difficult for the White House to answer those questions?  The American people deserve transparency from President Biden, not more lies," he added.

In his Wednesday memo Comer reposed several questions addressed to the White House in earlier letters to which Biden as so far been unresponsive.

Comer noted the White House has continued to obstruct the probe into President Biden’s alleged mishandling of classified documents by preventing witnesses from testifying and the probe into his use of pseudonym emails by withholding “thousands of pages” of documents.

Comer also noted the White House has refused to turn over drafts of the then-vice president’s important December 2015 speech in Ukraine, which came at an important time for his son Hunter, who was serving on the board of Burisma at the time.

The letter requests the President provide information about his documented interactions with several of Hunter Biden’s foreign business partners, including Ye Jianming, Vadym Pozharskyi, Yelena Baturina, and Henry Zhao, among others.

So far, the White House has declined to provide any information about these encounters, which have been confirmed by multiple impeachment witnesses.