Hunter Biden continues aggressive pushback against GOP foes
Hunter Biden's legal team continued this week its newly aggressive approach to combating his GOP critics and antagonists, turning arguments made by Republican House members during the Trump administration against them as they look for evidence of wrongdoing by either President Biden or his son. They have alerted more than a dozen Biden antagonists of potential litigation and are refusing to comply with demands from a Congressional committee.
On Wednesday, Mr. Biden's attorney, Abbe Lowell, sent letters to 14 prominent Republican media personalities and former officials who have accused Mr. Biden of corruption or disseminated material purporting to be from his son's laptop. Lowell's letter served "notice that a litigation hold should be in effect for the preservation and retention" of their records related to Mr. Biden.
Lowell's Wednesday letter was sent just before congressional Republicans sent a letter of their own to him. In the congressional letter, which was first obtained by CBS News, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky requested documents and communications from Hunter Biden and the president's brother James, as part of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee's probe into whether the president was involved in their finances or foreign business deals "with individuals who were connected to the Chinese Communist Party."
Lowell responded Thursday, declining to provide information, and accusing Comer of "peddling your own inaccurate and baseless conclusions under the guise of a real investigation" and turning "the Committee into 'Wonderland' and you into the Queen of Hearts shouting, 'sentence first, verdict afterwards.'"
He cited a landmark Supreme Court decision in which in 2020 the justices ruled Congress could not subpoena then-President Donald Trump's tax returns without putting forth a legitimate legislative reason for the demand. Lowell quoted another Republican member of the Oversight Committee, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, who in 2019 wrote that the "Supreme Court has cautioned that Congress does not have 'general authority to expose the private affairs of individuals without justification in terms of the functions of the Congress.'"
Jordan had called congressional subpoenas of Trump family records, "an unprecedented abuse of the Committee's subpoena authority," Lowell noted.
Comer wrote on Wednesday that the Oversight Committee "will examine drafting legislation to strengthen federal ethics laws regarding public officials and their families."
In Lowell's response Thursday, he wrote that the "attempt to invent a legislative purpose is thinly veiled, at best."
In response to Lowell's letter, a spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee accused Hunter Biden of "trying to stonewall Congress' oversight and hide information about Joe Biden's involvement in his family's suspicious business practices."
"The American people demand transparency and oversight, not political coverups. The Oversight Committee will continue its oversight and use all tools at its disposal to gather information critical to our investigation and to inform legislative solutions," the spokesperson said.
The exchange between Lowell and Comer came more than a week after Hunter Biden's team first went on the offensive, demanding state and federal investigations into the dissemination of his personal material — purported to be from his laptop — into several of the same people from whom he's now requested litigation holds.
Rudy Giuliani, the former adviser to Donald Trump, and Giuiani's attorney Robert Costello were among those who received letters from Hunter Biden's team. An advisor and spokesperson for Giuliani criticized Biden's team for releasing some of these letters to members of the media.
"Instead of gossiping with reporters and leaking this stuff to the press, Abbe Lowell should focus on the facts because the facts don't support his allegations. This is yet another failed attempt by Mr. Lowell to silence and intimidate Mayor Giuliani and Mr. Costello. That's why he made sure to send this letter to NBC, Politico and likely, you guys [CBS News]," said Ted Goodman, the Giuliani adviser.
