Hunter Biden's closed-door testimony in House GOP probe

Hunter Biden went directly after the Republicans who have pursued him in their impeachment investigation over the past year, accusing GOP lawmakers in his closed-door deposition on Wednesday of peddling “baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies about my father.”

Kicking off his highly anticipated testimony, President Joe Biden’s son delivered an opening statement that defended his father and attacked the Republican-led impeachment inquiry, issuing a defiant message ahead of hours of interrogation.

Here are some key takeaways from his testimony:

• Hunter doesn’t mince words attacking GOP: Hunter Biden’s opening statement at Wednesday’s deposition served two purposes: He made clear his father was not involved in his business and he took a swipe at Republicans who have accused him and his father of corruption. Hunter Biden accused Republicans of pursuing a “baseless and destructive political charade,” charging that the impeachment investigation was built on an “entire partisan house of cards on lies.” He acknowledged in his statement that he had made mistakes, pointing to his battle with addiction. He’s also facing federal tax and gun charges stemming from a years-long investigation by special counsel David Weiss.
• What happened inside the room? Depends who you ask: Lawmakers from both parties took turns at the cameras outside the hearing room to offer their spin on what was occurring inside. The Democrats went first, taking turns accusing the Republicans of wasting government resources pursuing the impeachment inquiry and embarrassing themselves with their questions of the president’s son. Rep. Nancy Mace, a South Carolina Republican, went to the camera after the Democrats were finished, saying she needed to respond to their spin. Mace said that Hunter Biden was being “defiant and dishonest,” saying some of his answers were “in direct conflict with other witnesses,” though she would not elaborate on what she was referring to.
• Hunter raises questions about Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law: Democrats leaving Hunter Biden’s deposition said the president’s son raised the “double standard” of Republicans investigating his business dealings but turning a blind eye to members of the Trump family like Jared Kushner, whose company received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia after leaving the Trump White House.
• Not the end of the impeachment investigation: The GOP committees and Hunter Biden’s legal team negotiated for months over the terms of the interview. The Republicans ultimately agreed not to have the interview videotaped – which they have done for other interviews – as a condition for Hunter Biden to appear behind closed doors. The concession was just one indication that Hunter Biden’s testimony is a key part of the impeachment investigation. House Oversight Chairman James Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said Wednesday that the committees’ next step would be to hold a public hearing with Hunter Biden.

Read full takeaways from the deposition.

Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell told reporters after his closed-door deposition that Republicans have produced "no evidence" to support allegations that President Joe Biden benefited from his son's business dealings. 

Lowell also criticized Republicans for going after Hunter's drug addiction during the deposition. 

"After seven hours of questions, the Republican majority end the day where they started. They have produced no evidence that would do anything to support the notion that there was any financial transactions that Hunter with his father. Period," Lowell said.

"It seems to me that the Republican members wanted to spend more time talking about my client's addiction than they could ask any question that had anything to do with what they call their impeachment inquiry. So as I said before, there is no evidence because there is no evidence. And today confirmed that," Lowell added.

House Oversight Chair James Comer said the next phase of the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden will be a public hearing with Hunter Biden.

“But I think this was a great deposition for us. It proved several bits of our evidence that we've been conducting throughout investigation, but there are also some contradictory statements that I think need further review. So this impeachment inquiry will now go to the next phase which will be a public hearing,” the Republican from Kentucky told reporters Wednesday afternoon.

Comer said the details of the hearing have not been finalized and will need to be worked out with Hunter Biden’s team.

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene criticized Hunter Biden for how he characterized his past struggles with drug addiction while also touting his previous business experience as she left the interview. 

Meanwhile, Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin told reporters after the deposition “all of it was much ado about nothing”

And Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell said, “The Biden impeachment investigation is over and we just witnessed its last breath. It’s over. After six plus hours of Hunter Biden testifying, we learned absolutely nothing.” 

Democrats leaving Hunter Biden’s deposition said the president’s son raised the “double standard” of Republicans investigating his business dealings but turning a blind eye to members of the Trump family like Jared Kushner, whose company received a $2 billion investment from Saudi Arabia after leaving the Trump White House.

“I think [Hunter Biden] may be a little bit frustrated by some of the double standards relating to Jared Kushner and money that has been just openly pocketed by Donald Trump in office and Jared Kushner, of course, brought back $2 billion from Saudi Arabia. And all of that has been part of the conversation and he was assertive about that,” said Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman echoed, “I thought one of his most powerful lines is when he made it very clear that none of the business dealings that he ever had were with any government entity, and he pointed out, unlike Jared Kushner has received $2 billion from the Saudi Arabian government as soon as he left office when he was the point person on Middle East policy.”

Goldman said, “We all noticed, I think, that there were some Republicans nodding their head, when Hunter suggested that it would be worth investigating Jared Kushner and his $2 billion from Saudi Arabia.”

Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz said after the president’s son posed the question of why Republicans were not curious about Kushner’s business dealings with Saudi Arabia, “for the first time, some Republicans in the room said, ‘No, we have a problem with that.'” 

Raskin said he understood why the president’s son wanted to testify publicly, given how forthright he has been in his answers.

“I understand why Hunter Biden wanted to testify in public because I think he would answer all of the questions that the public has based on all of his propaganda to everybody's satisfaction, and I understand why our Republican colleagues didn't want him to testify in public,” he said.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz said he was not viewing Wednesday’s deposition of Hunter Biden “through the lens of next steps” to an impeachment vote.

“Here we’re asking questions about these corrupt business practices. I’m not really framing that through the lens of next steps. I’m just trying to get the facts,” he said when asked if the impeachment inquiry was headed in a direction that would result in a vote on articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden.

Gaetz said Biden has been answering questions and has not pleaded the fifth. Gaetz previously admitted on CNN that some of his Republican colleagues were "a little oversauced" in their bribery claims against the president.

After the first hour of the deposition, Hunter Biden went over to GOP Rep. Nancy Mace to shake her hand and tell her that he is not evil, according to a source who witnessed the interaction. 

The personal appeal from the president's son comes after Mace targeted Hunter at a public hearing. 

In December, when Hunter Biden showed up to a hearing holding him in contempt for initially evading a subpoena for his closed-door testimony, Mace said, "You are the epitome of White privilege," adding, "coming into the Oversight Committee, spitting in our face, ignoring a congressional subpoena to be deposed. What are you afraid of? You have no balls.”

In response to the handshake, Mace told Hunter that she thought he was being defiant and dishonest in his answers, the source added. Mace has emerged as a top critic of Hunter Biden in the GOP.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin, ranking member of the House Oversight committee, said Hunter Biden reiterated that he neither asked for nor received any official favors regarding his businesses from his father and the president did not profit in any way from his dealings.

“So what we saw I think was a rather embarrassing spectacle where the Republicans continue to belabor completely trivial points they seem to be obsessively focused on,” he told reporters after the first hour of Hunter Biden’s testimony.

“I believe based on this first hour that this whole thing has really been a tremendous waste of our legislative time and the people’s resources,” he said. 

Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Judiciary committee, called it a “second-hand embarrassment” as he accused the Republicans of trying to humiliate the president and noted they are doing this as a government shutdown is looming with no agreement to avert it. Swalwell also said Republicans have "never accepted Joe Biden as president and now in this last Hail Mary effort they’re going to try to pull off something."

Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman said if the impeachment inquiry continued, Chairs Jim Comer and Jim Jordan were “working with Russia” to interfere in the 2024 election.

Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly called it a “feckless enterprise.”

“Remember, this is all predicated upon testimony originally provided them by four witnesses, one of whom is in jail, one of whom is accused of being a Chinese spy, and the third one also in jail for lying to the FBI and possibly being an agent of Russian intelligence. What committee in Congress wants to hang its hat on that kind of evidence and that kind of basis. Enough said,” he said.

As Democrats and Republicans trickle out of the ongoing deposition of Hunter Biden, each side is unsurprisingly presenting different narratives. Hunter Biden is appearing before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees in their impeachment inquiry of his father, which has focused largely on Hunter’s foreign business dealings.

GOP Rep. Nancy Mace left the closed-door deposition with Hunter Biden and claimed the president’s son is being “defiant and also dishonest," alleging some of Hunter Biden's testimony was “in direct conflict with other witnesses.”

Mace said Hunter Biden has not plead the 5th Amendment at this point in the interview: "No he has not done that yet.”

Hunter Biden said in a statement for his deposition that his testimony should “put an end” to the Republican impeachment inquiry because his father, President Joe Biden, was not involved in his business dealings.

“I am here today to provide the Committees with the one uncontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry: I did not involve my father in my business,” Hunter Biden said, according to a copy of his opening statement. “Not while I was a practicing lawyer, not in my investments or transactions domestic or international, not as a board member, and not as an artist. Never.”

Hunter Biden is appearing before the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees in their impeachment inquiry of his father, which has focused largely on Hunter’s foreign business dealings.

In his statement, the president’s son said he has made mistakes in his life but attacked Republicans for having “hunted me in your partisan political pursuit of my dad.”

“You have trafficked in innuendo, distortion, and sensationalism — all the while ignoring the clear and convincing evidence staring you in the face,” Hunter Biden said. “You do not have evidence to support the baseless and MAGA-motivated conspiracies about my father because there isn’t any.”