Jockeying over Hunter Biden House Testimony

The House Oversight Committee has issued a subpoena for Hunter Biden to show up for deposition testimony behind closed doors on December 13. This is happening within the context of what House Republicans theatrically label their “impeachment inquiry” regarding Biden père, though that is false advertising: Republicans never voted to conduct an impeachment inquiry because they’d have lost such a vote; the inquiry was proclaimed, abracadabra-style, by a speaker — Kevin McCarthy (R., Calif.) — who is no longer speaker.

Against this backdrop, Hunter’s legal team has reacted to the subpoena by agreeing that he will show up but demanding that the testimony be held in public.

Yawn. This, too, is sheer theater.

A subpoena is not a suggestion. It is an order enforceable by legal penalties. By agreeing that he will attend, Hunter is putting a brave face on what’s no more than an acknowledgement that he will do what he is legally compelled to do. He is demanding that the hearing be public because he knows Republicans will refuse.

This is a reprisal of a game we see time and again. Take the January 6 committee hearings. Leery of that committee’s propensity to selectively slice and dice video of the depositions for insertion into its slickly produced public performances (they were not hearings, properly understood), some witnesses “demanded” to be permitted to testify publicly. The committee demurred, knowing that the witnesses had no right to refuse the closed-door deposition. For the most part, the witnesses reluctantly complied. (The Biden Justice Department prosecuted Trump advisers Steve Bannon and Peter Navarro, who were convicted for refusing to comply.)

From a public-relations standpoint, of course, the media-Democrat complex approved of the anti-Trump January 6 committee but despises the anti-Biden investigation by GOP-controlled House committees. Ergo, Hunter’s public-hearing gambit will get sympathetic coverage that similar resistance by J6 witnesses did not.

For the J6 committee, the media was quick to explain that, during an active investigation, it is important to question witnesses behind closed doors, using deposition procedures that allow for more searching interrogation, rather than the crazy-quilt five-minute rounds of public hearings. This enables investigators to gather more evidence and prevents witnesses from colluding to get their stories straight.

The Oversight Committee chaired by James Comer (R., Ky.) will not get such a benefit of the doubt — we’ll instead hear that the committee fears questioning Hunter in public because it knows it has nothing tying his shady business dealings to President Biden (the refrain that continues even after the committee has demonstrated the transfer of over $24 million in payments from agents of corrupt and anti-American regimes to sundry Biden family members and associates, in addition to $240,000 in checks that went directly to Joe Biden from brother Jim — which are claimed by the Bidens to be “loan repayments”).

Legally, all this posturing is beside the point: Hunter is still required to show up on December 13. Of course, showing up and providing substantive testimony are two very different things.

The committee has no power to force Hunter to answer its questions. He is not only under indictment by the Justice Department on gun charges that will presumably go to trial sometime next year (I do not believe a trial date has been set); the faux special counsel, Biden Justice Department prosecutor David Weiss, claims to be conducting a continuing investigation of Hunter’s business dealings — specifically, his suspected evasion of taxes, though if it were a real investigation it would include other more serious suspicions (e.g., money laundering, bribery, and failure to register as a foreign agent). As we’ve noted many times, Weiss has so dragged his feet on this “investigation” that the statute of limitations on much of the most serious conduct has already lapsed. Nevertheless, Weiss at least purports to be considering charges, which means Hunter has a very live Fifth Amendment privilege (i.e., the legal privilege to refuse to provide testimony that could be used against him).

Given that state of play, and the fact that Hunter is represented by Abbe Lowell, a very experienced defense lawyer, it would be far-fetched to think Hunter’s House testimony would be very illuminating. If Hunter had not been indicted, moreover, and if his guilt on some tax offenses were not so clear that he was prepared to plead guilty to some of them (albeit misdemeanors, not felonies), it might be seen as a big deal for the president’s son to take the Fifth in congressional testimony. But since he has already been indicted, and since everybody knows he’s got criminal tax liability, not many people would begrudge him a refusal to answer questions. After all, it is highly unusual for a congressional committee to subpoena a person who is subject to live criminal jeopardy; typically, Congress would wait for the criminal-justice process to play out.

In any event, knowing that the press will play up Hunter’s offer to testify publicly — which, again, he made knowing the committee would decline — Republicans have countered that they will grant Hunter his supposed desire to answer questions publicly . . . but only after he testifies behind closed doors as required on December 13. This is in keeping with prior congressional practice — again, the January 6 committee publicly questioned some witnesses after deposing them behind closed doors.

There is thus no shortage of posturing on both sides — by the committee, which is not actually conducting an impeachment inquiry and lacks the legal arsenal to do the criminal investigation that the Biden Justice Department has failed to do; and by Hunter Biden, who knows that the committee really can’t force him to answer questions because the prosecution the Biden Justice Department really does not want to do provides him with the cover of privilege. There will be no shortage of huffing and puffing over the next two weeks, but Hunter’s eventual testimony is unlikely to amount to much.