WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Monday rejected a long-shot effort by House Republicans to get the president. Joe Biden to testify before lawmakers in the stalled GOP impeachment inquiry.
In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, the White House rejected the invitation sent to Biden last month, calling it a “partisan charade” in an impeachment inquiry that has only focused on no evidence implicating the president in wrongdoing while holding public office. House Republicans were seeking information about the Biden family’s business dealings in what the Republican Party called an alleged influence-peddling scheme.
“Your committee’s so-called ‘impeachment inquiry’ has succeeded only in providing ample evidence that the President did not, in fact, do anything wrong,” wrote Richard Sauber, special advisor to the President, in the letter sent to Comer on Monday.
Sauber added: “Your insistence on peddling these false and unsubstantiated claims despite ample evidence to the contrary makes one thing clear about your investigation: the facts do not matter to you. »
Sauber himself will leave the White House early next month, another sign from the administration’s perspective that House Republicans’ efforts to impeach Biden are largely over. The lawyer was hired in 2022 to oversee the White House response to congressional investigations as Democrats prepared to lose their majority on Capitol Hill later in November.
To replace Sauber, the White House is elevating his deputy, Rachel Cotton. Sauber returns to the private sector.
In his request to the White House, Comer had asked Biden to “explain, under oath,” what involvement he had in the Biden family businesses.
The committee claimed over the past year that the Bidens swapped last names, trying to connect a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or when he was not in office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates.
But despite devoting countless resources and questioning dozens of witnesses, including the President’s son Hunter Biden and the President’s brother James Biden, Republicans have produced no evidence showing that Joe Biden was directly involved in or benefited from the his family’s businesses while he held public office.
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Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.
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