But the interim results have encouraged a White House that has long prepared for this moment. Republicans secured much smaller margins than expected, and aides to President Joe Biden and other Democrats believe voters punished the GOP for its reliance on conspiracy theories and Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election. They see it as an endorsement of the administration’s playbook for midterms and going forward to focus on legislative accomplishments and build on them, unlike Trump-aligned candidates whose complaints about the president’s son have played to their most loyal supporters. them and they were too far in the weeds. for the average American. Democrats retained control of the Senate, and the GOP’s margin in the House is expected to be its smallest majority in two decades. “If you look back, we picked up seats in New York, New Jersey, California,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist and public affairs executive. “These were not voters coming to the polls because they wanted Hunter Biden investigated — far from it. They were coming to the polls because they were upset about inflation. They are upset about gas prices. They’re upset about what’s going on with the war in Ukraine.” But House Republicans used their first news conference after clinching the majority to discuss the president’s son Hunter Biden and the Justice Department, renewing longstanding complaints about what they say is a politicized law enforcement agency and a corruption bombshell which is ignored by Democrats and the media. “Since their first press conference, these congressional Republicans have made it clear that they’re going to do one thing in this new Congress, which is investigations, and they’re doing it for political payback for Biden’s efforts on an agenda that helps workers . said Kyle Herrig, the founder of the Congressional Integrity Project, a new multimillion-dollar effort by Democratic strategists to counter the onslaught of House GOP investigations. Inside the White House, the counsel’s office added staff months ago and stepped up its communications efforts, and staff members were deeply involved in the investigation and preparation for the attack. They have worked to try to identify their own vulnerabilities and design effective responses. But anything the House pursues about Hunter Biden, who is not a White House employee, will come from his lawyers, who declined to respond to the allegations. Representative James Comer, the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said there are “troubling questions” of utmost importance about the business dealings of Hunter Biden and one of the president’s brothers, James Biden, that require a deeper investigation. He said they are also looking at the president. “Eliminating waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government is the primary mission of the Oversight Committee,” said Comer, R-Ky. “Therefore, this research is a top priority.” Republican lawmakers promised a raft of new information last week, but what they have presented so far has been a brief review of several years of allegations about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, returning to the conspiracy theories raised by Trump. Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then vice president, was helping run the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. Senate Republicans said the appointment may have created a conflict of interest, but presented no evidence that the hiring influenced US policies and did not implicate Joe Biden in any wrongdoing. Republican lawmakers and their staff have spent the past year analyzing messages and financial transactions found on a laptop belonging to Hunter Biden. They have long discussed issuing congressional subpoenas to foreign entities that have done business with it and recently brought in James Madolfo, a former federal prosecutor, to help with the investigation as general counsel to the Oversight Committee. The difference now is that Republicans will have the subpoena power to follow. “The Republicans will move forward,” said Tom Davis, a Republican lawyer who specializes in congressional investigations and legislative strategy. “I think their members are enthusiastic about taking on this issue … there are a lot of unanswered questions. Look, the 40-year trend is that parties under-investigate their own and over-investigate the other party. It didn’t start here.” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed the GOP’s focus on the investigations as “brand” thinking. “They said they were going to fight inflation, they said they were going to make it a priority, then they’re going to get the majority, and their top priority is not really to focus on the American family, but on the president’s family,” he said. Even some newly elected Republicans oppose the idea. “The top priority is tackling inflation and the cost of living. … What I don’t want to see is what we’ve seen in the Trump administration, where Democrats have gone after the president and the administration nonstop,” Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York told CNN. Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business work are already under federal investigation, with a grand jury in Delaware hearing testimony in recent months. Although he has never held a position on the presidential campaign trail or in the White House, his involvement on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have long raised questions about whether he does business with his father’s public offices. . references in his emails to “the big guy”. Joe Biden has said he has never spoken to his son about his foreign businesses, and nothing from Republicans suggests otherwise. And there is no indication that the federal investigation implicates the president. Trump and his supporters, meanwhile, have pushed a widely discredited theory that Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor to shield his son and Burisma from the investigation. Biden did push for the prosecutor’s firing, but that was a reflection of the official position not only of the Obama administration but also of many Western countries, and because the prosecutor was seen as soft on corruption. House Republicans have also signaled impending investigations into immigration, government spending and parental rights. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klein, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray have been put on notice as potential witnesses. Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, the new chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has long complained about what he says is a politicized Justice Department and the ongoing investigations into Trump. On Friday, Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate, as well as key aspects of a separate investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and impeachment efforts. 2020 elections. Trump, in a speech Friday night at his Mar-a-Lago estate, slammed the development as “the latest in a long line of witch hunts.” Of Joe and Hunter Biden, he asked, “Where is their special counsel?” Matt Mackowiak, a Republican political strategist, said it’s one thing if the Hunter Biden investigations stick to questions of corruption, but if they turn to the kind of malicious messages that circulate in far-right circles, I don’t know that the public will have much patience. for this”.
Associated Press writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.
