Hunter Biden investigation: Top takeaways from the first impeachment inquiry hearing

House Republicans used their first impeachment inquiry hearing on Thursday to lay out the basis for starting the proceedings, just one day after releasing hundreds of pages of evidence in the Hunter Biden investigation.

Facing frequent objections from Democrats defending President Joe Biden, GOP lawmakers relied on a panel of tax and legal experts to explain the seriousness of the allegations against the president.

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The hearing veered into several procedural tangents as Democrats attempted to submit their own evidence or introduce motions that required lengthy votes.

But Republicans managed to highlight new documents that shed light both on the Biden family business dealings and on how the Justice Department handled an investigation into them.

Here are some of the top takeaways.

NO MORE DEFENSES FOR HUNTER

Few Democrats even attempted to defend Hunter Biden’s years of profiting off foreign relationships, even though many have done so in the past.

Instead, several Democrats used their time during the hearing to distance Joe Biden from what his son had done over the past decade, without defending Hunter Biden’s work.

“The name that’s been repeated most often in this hearing is Hunter Biden, not President Biden,” said Michael Gerhardt, a University of North Carolina law professor who served as the Democrats’ witness.

Jonathan Turley, a constitutional law professor at George Washington University whom the Republicans called as a witness, also spoke to the widespread acknowledgment that Hunter Biden acted unethically.

“Many people accept that what Hunter Biden did was rather raw and open influence peddling,” Turley said.

During the 2020 race, Democrats tried to defend Hunter Biden’s conduct by arguing that he was a private citizen, an attorney, and had a background in lobbying that qualified him to work as a consultant while his father was vice president.

Now Democrats are focused mostly on discrediting evidence that links Joe Biden to Hunter Biden’s deals in China, Ukraine, Romania, and beyond, not on arguing that Hunter Biden’s work is above criticism.

JIM BIDEN HAS ENTERED THE CHAT

Lawmakers discussed newly unveiled messages between Hunter Biden and his uncle, Jim Biden, that underscored how deeply intertwined the Biden family’s finances are.

In a December 2018 message released on Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee, Jim Biden consoled Hunter Biden about money troubles, assuring Hunter Biden that he could “work with [your] father alone.”

“We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work,” James Biden, the president’s brother, wrote to Hunter Biden in the WhatsApp message.

In another message, this one from August 2017, Hunter Biden wrote to a Chinese business associate that Jim Biden would be bringing his brother to a meeting with the powerful chairman of a Chinese company that was then paying both Hunter and Jim Biden large amounts of money.

Jim Biden’s brother is, of course, Joe Biden, who was no longer vice president at the time.

Emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop had previously revealed Jim Biden’s extensive involvement in Hunter Biden’s Chinese business ventures. But in a September 2022 interview with FBI and IRS investigators, a summary of which was released on Wednesday, Jim Biden claimed to have had very little knowledge of how the Chinese company operated and denied having close relationships with any of the Chinese executives paying him through Hunter Biden.

House Republicans have spent relatively little time focusing on Jim Biden’s involvement in foreign business deals, giving Hunter Biden’s work far more scrutiny.

But Jim Biden’s ability to earn significant amounts of money from Hunter Biden’s foreign businesses despite having a markedly different professional background could become a larger part of the impeachment inquiry, as Republicans could argue the proximity to Joe Biden is the only reason both Hunter and Jim Biden managed to rake in money.

DOES IT MATTER IF JOE BIDEN RECEIVED PAYMENTS DIRECTLY?

That was a question Republicans appeared to pose as they laid out a case for their impeachment inquiry that, they suggested, is strong enough without evidence of a direct payment to Joe Biden.

The foreign money pocketed by Hunter Biden, Jim Biden, Hallie Biden, and other family members could form the basis of a case that focuses on what Joe Biden may have done to enable such earnings, even if no paper trail ever connects his bank account to the foreign deals.

“Obviously the strongest case is if you have a direct payment,” Turley said during the hearing. “But this idea that you can have millions going to a politician’s family and that’s not a benefit, I think, is pretty fallacious.”

GOP lawmakers cited emails, texts, and witness testimony that showed how Hunter Biden and his associates used Joe Biden to advance business deals by bringing him to meetings, putting him on speakerphone with foreign partners, or using the trappings of the vice presidency, such as White House visits, to project access.

Republicans argued the record already demonstrates that Hunter Biden’s foreign business would not have been possible without the participation of his father.

“How can President Biden continue to maintain that Hunter’s private business is simply that, private, when it’s clear from bank records, emails, and testimony that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s pay-to-play scheme and crooked foreign business dealings?” said Rep. Jake LaTurner (R-KS) during the hearing.

Democrats, meanwhile, declared the impeachment case dead without evidence of direct payments from foreign businesses to Joe Biden.

Whether Republicans can advance their arguments absent a direct payment could determine the fate of the impeachment process.

BIDEN AIDES UNDER SCRUTINY?

Some GOP lawmakers suggested that current and former White House aides who helped Joe Biden mislead the public about Hunter Biden’s business deals could become relevant to the case.

Turley testified that former President Richard Nixon’s use of his aides to cover up evidence of corruption was ultimately a “trip wire” in the impeachment inquiry proceedings against him.

“The degree to which you enlist support for a false narrative or to obstruct Congress can go into things like abuse of power,” Turley said.

Joe Biden’s aides during his vice presidency helped spread misleading information about Hunter Biden’s work with Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and recently released emails suggest the aides coordinated with one of Hunter Biden’s business partners on how to respond to questions from reporters. The aides may not have done so knowingly.

GOP lawmakers pointed to Attorney General Merrick Garland as another example of a top aide who misled the public in an effort to shield Joe Biden from scrutiny.

Garland claimed repeatedly that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss had full authority to charge Hunter Biden in any jurisdiction he saw fit before two IRS whistleblowers revealed Weiss had no such power. Testifying before the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month, Garland said Weiss would have had the authority if he’d requested it, a departure from his previous assertions.

Statements by Garland and other Joe Biden aides could come under the microscope as Republicans piece together how the administration has handled inquiries into the Hunter Biden business controversy.

IT’S (SUPER) COMPLICATED

GOP lawmakers attempted to lay out all the names, dates, dollar amounts, and countries that make up their body of evidence, but the complex nature of the business dealings sometimes made the arguments difficult to follow.

Throughout the hourslong hearing, members cited charts with sprawling networks of shell companies, snippets of texts and emails that spanned years, and the difficult-to-pronounce names of numerous foreign businessmen who worked with Hunter Biden.

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The effort underscored the challenges Republicans may have in explaining their evidence to a public that has heard bits and pieces about the Biden family business deals for the last three years.

While House Republicans have uncovered a remarkable amount of new information about the dealings since arriving in the majority in January, some of it tying Joe Biden to the businesses for the first time, they run the risk of struggling to explain the case clearly to voters. The sometimes unwieldy impeachment inquiry hearing showed that the GOP may have work to do on that front.