A Senate committee will vote next week on a subpoena related to a Republican-led investigation targeting Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
According to a memo obtained by POLITICO, the Senate Homeland Security Committee plans to vote next Wednesday on Chairman Ron Johnson’s request to issue a subpoena to Blue Star Strategies, a Democratic public-relations firm, as part of the panel’s probe of corruption allegations against Hunter Biden and the Obama-era State Department.
The vote comes as the Republican-led Senate aims to resume its normal business amid the coronavirus pandemic, including confirming judicial nominees and reauthorizing federal surveillance powers. But Democrats have slammed the GOP’s agenda since the chamber returned to Washington last week, arguing that senators should prioritize mitigating the economic and public health impacts of the coronavirus crisis over partisan priorities.
“We’re in the middle of a public health and economic crisis, but instead of holding oversight hearings about testing, PPE, or bringing in the FEMA administrator, Senate Republicans are choosing to pursue diversionary, partisan conspiracy theories to prop up President Trump,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said of the decision to schedule a subpoena vote during the pandemic.
Committee rules require a vote on a subpoena if the minority party objects. The committee’s top Democrat, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, has vigorously opposed the Biden investigation, and he has demanded defense briefings in advance of any subpoena vote.
“The American people deserve to know the extent to which the U.S.-based, Democrat-led consulting company leveraged its connections within the Obama administration to try to gain access and potentially influence U.S. government agencies on behalf of its corrupt client, Burisma,” said Austin Altenburg, a spokesman for the committee.
Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, initially planned to subpoena Andrii Telizhenko, a former consultant for Blue Star Strategies, but ultimately withdrew those plans amid concerns about Telizhenko’s credibility given his unsubstantiated claims of coordination between the Ukrainian government and the Democratic National Committee in 2016.
Telizhenko’s involvement in the investigation prompted angry exchanges at a classified all-senators briefing in March centering on election security. Sources described the briefing as “combative” and “personal” as Democratic senators challenged Johnson and argued that his investigation undermines U.S. national security by aiding Russian efforts to sow disinformation in the U.S. political system.
Blue Star Strategies did work for Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company whose board Hunter Biden served on. The investigation centers on allegations that Blue Star Strategies, which has withheld certain documents from Johnson, sought to leverage Biden’s role on the board to influence policy matters at the State Department. Biden and his father reject the claims, which have been pushed by President Donald Trump and his allies, in particular his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.
Johnson has said he plans to release an interim report over the summer on the status of the investigation.
On the other side of the Capitol, the Democratic-led House Foreign Affairs Committee is looking into the State Department’s communications with the senators as part of their investigation.
“[The] State Department appears to be a willing partner in this naked political exercise after completely stonewalling the impeachment inquiry,” a committee aide said. “Chairman [Eliot] Engel has requested that State produce to the Foreign Affairs Committee all the information sent to Senators Johnson and Graham no later than this Friday. We’re not going to allow the State Department to be turned into an arm of the Trump campaign.”