Hunter Biden attempted to make amends on Wednesday with a Republican congresswoman who had previously accused him of being “the epitome of white privilege.” She refused to accept his offer. 

Congresswoman Nancy Mace tells Fox News that the first son walked up to her during his closed-door Oversight Committee deposition and attempted to shake her hand. 

“Interestingly, Hunter Biden — one of the first things he did after the first hour of the hearing — is he made a beeline in my direction to shake my hand and tell me face-to-face that he is not the evil man I portray him to be,” she told Fox News’s Jesse Watters. “My response, Jesse, was that: no, he was being dishonest and defiant in his testimony.”

“I guess he thinks he’s a smooth talker,” she continued. “He was way overconfident today. He stuck his hand right now and shook my hand and looked me in the eye and told me he was not evil. My response was: he was defiant and dishonest.”

When Mr. Biden made a surprise appearance at an Oversight Committee hearing in January, while it was debating holding him in contempt of Congress, Ms. Mace called him “the epitome of white privilege” as the wealthy son of the president of the United States who felt that he could just waltz into a committee hearing where he was the subject of discussion. Mr. Biden, at the time, was refusing to give a closed-door deposition, as he’d been subpoenaed to do. He would eventually comply under pressure. 

The first son will soon appear for public testimony before House impeachment investigators after telling members behind closed doors on Wednesday that he “never” involved his father in any of his foreign business dealings or other ventures. 

Mr. Biden’s denials came after months of testimony and statements by various figures involved in the Biden family’s business affairs that the first son and his uncle, James, were in the business of selling “the illusion of access” to the president and that the president regularly called into his son’s business meetings and even had lunch with the first son’s foreign clients at a see-and-be-seen Washington dining icon, Cafe Milano. 

WhatsApp messages obtained by IRS whistleblowers and made public by congressional investigators also showed Hunter shaking down a Chinese business partner from whom he was demanding money, threatening him that his father was sitting next to him. 

“Inconsistencies” in Mr. Biden’s testimony on Wednesday, Republicans say, require that he answer questions before the public.  

“I told him that his testimony directly contradicted the testimony of other witnesses,” Ms. Mace said of her interaction with the first son. “He contradicted people today.”

“There are … some contradictory statements that I think need further review,” the chairman of the Oversight Committee, James Comer, says. “So this impeachment inquiry will now go to the next phase, which will be a public hearing.”

Mr. Comer previously told the Sun that he had hoped to go through the first son’s bank transactions “line-by-line” to figure out the source of his overseas payments and where that money ultimately went. Now that Mr. Biden has told investigators that some of those transactions were anodyne and some of his communications with business partners were taken out of context, Mr. Comer wants to put Mr. Biden in front of the press to answer questions. 

In his opening statement before the impeachment inquiry, Mr. Biden said that he “never” involved his father in any of his professional activities. 

“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,” Mr. Biden said. “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.”

When he left the deposition after seven hours of testimony, Mr. Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, reiterated his claim that there is “no evidence” of any wrongdoing by either the first son or the president. 

When Mr. Biden promptly left the building after his lawyers’ remarks, a reporter shouted a question to ask if the cocaine found at the White House last year belonged to him. He did not respond. 

The first son recently said in an interview with Axios that the Republicans are simply trying to pressure him into relapsing on drugs and alcohol as a way to hurt his father. Mr. Biden was elaborating on comments he made last year to the techno artist and podcaster Moby, a fellow addict in recovery, that Republicans were trying to “kill” him.  

“My testimony today should put an end to this baseless and destructive political charade,” Mr. Biden said in his remarks to the committee on Wednesday. “You have wasted valuable time and resources attacking me and my family for your own political gain when you should be fixing the real problems in this country.”

Mr. Comer told reporters before the deposition began that he had already proved the existence of an influence-peddling scheme and needed Mr. Biden to answer questions about the shell companies the Biden family and their associates set up, as well as specific bank transactions and text messages. 

“The Bidens didn’t have a legitimate business. Their business was selling access to Joe Biden — ‘the brand,’” Mr. Comer said, referring to an impeachment witness and former Biden associate, Devon Archer, who said that the first son was “selling the illusion of access” to the president in order to make millions of dollars. 

President Biden is also confirmed to have spoken with some of his son’s business partners, including a partner from Communist China who dined with the then-vice president and a group of executives from a Chinese Communist Party-linked energy firm, CEFC, which sent the first son and the president’s brother millions of dollars after the president met with the group in 2017. 

“Joe Biden communicated with people right before the closing — so he was the closer — of the influence-peddling scheme,” Mr. Comer said, referring to the 2017 meeting that later brought in millions of dollars for the president’s family. 

He also mentioned that the president’s brother, James Biden, who is Hunter’s uncle, had used his brother’s name for decades in order to win favorable terms on loans and pitch himself as a powerful consultant and lobbyist at the nation’s capital. The president’s brother once won hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of a loan from a now-defunct healthcare company, Americore, by promising results due to his being “Joe Biden’s brother.” Americore would collapse. 

“In at least two cases — one was CEFC, which is one that Hunter Biden was leading, and one with Jim Biden, which was the Americore deal — both times in their scheme, in their pitch … they said Joe Biden was interested in an equity ownership stake,” Mr. Comer said.