The chairman of the House Oversight Committee and leader of the Republicans’ impeachment inquiry, James Comer, is asking President Biden to sit for an interview behind closed doors with his committee on April 16, and later for a public hearing. The White House is unlikely to accept that offer, which may lead Mr. Comer to issue a subpoena or criminal referral for the president down the line. “The Committee has accounted for over $24 million that has flowed from foreign sources to you, your family, and their business associates. You have repeatedly denied playing any role in your family’s business activities, but the Committee has amassed evidence — including bank records and witness testimony — that wholly contradicts your position on these matters,” Mr. Comer writes to the president. “In light of the yawning gap between your public statements and the evidence assembled by the Committee as well as the White House’s obstruction, it is in the best interest of the American people for you to answer questions from Members of Congress directly, and I hereby invite you to do so,” the chairman continues. Mr. Comer has faced headwinds in recent weeks as the House Republican majority narrows to just one vote and Hunter Biden refuses to cooperate further with investigators. The chairman has signaled that a vote of the full House on impeachment may no longer be on the table, and that instead, his committee will draft criminal referrals for members of the Biden family and other associates so that President Trump’s Department of Justice could enact what Mr. Comer calls “swift justice” come January 2025 if the former president wins the election.Not only does Mr. Comer want the Mr. Biden to come in for a private interview, but he suggests a public hearing is also in order. “I invite you to participate in a public hearing at which you will be afforded the opportunity to explain, under oath, your involvement with your family’s sources of income and the means it has used to generate it,” the chairman says. The White House has made it clear, though, that no such interview — public or private — with the president will take place. “This is a sad stunt at the end of a dead impeachment. Call it a day, pal,” the White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, Ian Sams, said in response to Mr. Comer’s March 20 announcement he may invite the president for an interview.Following the resignation of Congressman Ken Buck and the looming resignation of Congressman Mike Gallagher, the House Republican majority would only be able to lose one member on the floor during an impeachment vote for the articles to pass through the House. Some GOP lawmakers have said that they do not see evidence that the president has committed high crimes or misdemeanors. “I have yet to see any evidence that would warrant the rise to impeachment,” a Biden-district GOP member, Congressman Mike Lawler, said in an interview on March 21. Another Biden-district Republican, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick, said it is “the right decision” to not bring articles of impeachment to the floor. That will not stop Mr. Comer from putting an exclamation point on the end of his 14-month investigation, however. He has signaled in recent weeks that it may be criminal referrals — not articles of impeachment — that close out the impeachment inquiry.
