House Oversight panel will hold hearing on probe into Biden family financial dealings

By Annie Grayer, CNN

House Oversight Chairman James Comer announced that his panel will hold a hearing next Friday to spotlight the Treasury Department’s failure to provide bank activity reports for President Joe Biden‘s son Hunter, presidential brother James Biden and several Biden family associates and their related companies.

The bank activity reports in the Treasury Department’s custody have long been a top target for Comer, a Kentucky Republican who has vowed to investigate the Biden family’s financial transactions and foreign business dealings. Although his requests went unanswered when House Republicans were in the minority, Comer is making this effort a top priority for the Oversight panel now that he holds the powerful committee gavel.

Comer, in one of his first moves as chairman, made a renewed request to the Treasury Department on January 11 for the bank reports, also known as suspicious activity reports. He asked to be supplied with the information by January 25. Comer later sent an official request to Hunter Biden, James Biden and a close associate of Hunter Biden’s for documents related to their foreign business dealings.

Last week, Comer wrote a letter to a Treasury Department official spelling out the ways in which committee Republicans had tried to modify their request. He outlined his willingness to view the reports in a restricted way and to prioritize the requests and accept the reports on a rolling basis.

“Given the amount of time that has passed since our initial request and Treasury’s inability to provide a projected timeframe when the SARs will be produced, the Committee believes Treasury may be delaying its production to hinder our investigation and operating in bad faith,” Comer wrote to Isabella More, the deputy assistant secretary for oversight at the Treasury Department, on February 24.

Comer cited an email from the Treasury Department on February 23 that said it must “confer with law enforcement partners, who may identify particular law enforcement conflicts or sensitivities” and that the “entire process takes considerable time to complete.” CNN has not obtained this email.

In a letter responding to Comer, the Treasury Department assistant secretary for legislative affairs, Jonathan C. Davidson, laid out the ongoing correspondence between the two sides, how the department is working to respond to the committee’s request and why those requests take time.

Davidson wrote the department has “already completed significant work to identify and review potentially responsive records.” He outlined that it takes time to identify and review law enforcement sensitive materials relevant to the panel’s request.

“The Department has consistently engaged with the Committee in good faith on this matter,” Davidson wrote. “These are the same processes, and similar timelines, that the Department followed when it received requests from committee chairs in the prior Congress.”

Davidson added that a public hearing “would likely not be the most effective venue for an update” on the requests because it is not a venue where sensitive law enforcement materials can be discussed.

Comer has previously pointed to the suspicious activity reports as evidence of potential wrongdoing by the President’s family members. But such reports are not conclusive and do not necessarily indicate wrongdoing. Financial institutions file millions of suspicious activity reports each year and few lead to law enforcement inquiries.

In a statement about the upcoming hearing, Comer said, “Biden’s Treasury Department continues to make excuses for its failure to provide the suspicious activity reports that are critical to our investigation of the Biden family’s business schemes.”

The Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for legislative affairs, Jonathan C. Davidson, is expected to testify at the hearing Friday.

“At next week’s hearing, a Treasury Department official can explain to Congress and the American people why the department is hiding critical information,” Comer said in his statement.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

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