WASHINGTON — The White House on Monday rejected a longstanding effort by Republicans in the House of Representatives to have President Joe Biden testify before lawmakers in the GOP’s stalled impeachment inquiry.
In a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, the White House rejected the invitation sent to Biden last month, calling it a “partisan charade” in an impeachment investigation that has found no evidence that the president is involved in any misconduct during his term of office. Republicans in the House of Representatives were seeking information about the Biden family’s business dealings in what the GOP described as an alleged scheme to exert influence.
“Your committee’s so-called ‘impeachment investigation’ has succeeded only in uncovering abundant evidence that the President has in fact done nothing wrong,” wrote Richard Sauber, special counsel to the President, in the letter sent to Comer on Monday was sent.
Sauber added: “Your insistence on spreading these false and unsupported allegations, despite ample evidence to the contrary, makes one thing about your investigation abundantly clear: the facts do not matter to you.”
Sauber himself will leave the White House early next month, another sign from the administration’s perspective that House Republicans’ attempt to impeach Biden is largely over. The lawyer was appointed in 2022 to oversee the White House response to congressional investigations as Democrats braced to lose their majority on Capitol Hill later that November.
To replace Sauber, the White House is raising his deputy, Rachel Cotton. Sauber returns to the private sector.
In his request to the White House, Comer had asked Biden to “explain under oath” what involvement he had in Biden family businesses.
The committee has alleged over the past year that the Bidens were trading on the family name, trying to link a handful of phone calls or dinner meetings between Joe Biden, when he was vice president or not in office, and Hunter Biden and his business associates. .
But despite deploying countless resources and interviewing dozens of witnesses, including the president’s son Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden, Republicans have not produced any evidence showing that Joe Biden directly was involved in or profited from his family’s businesses.
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Associated Press writer Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.