OAN Roy Francis
UPDATED 8:07 AM – Tuesday, March 14, 2023
The Treasury Department has agreed to give the House Oversight Committee access to review the suspicious activity reports related to Hunter Biden.
In January, committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a letter to Treasure Secretary Janet Yellen requesting information about Biden’s finances. The letter requested access to the Biden family and their associates’ business transaction that were flagged by United States banks.
The Treasury has now agreed to grant the committee “in camera access” to the requested reports.
“After two months of dragging their feet, the Treasury Department is finally providing us with access to the suspicious activity reports for the Biden family and their associates’ business transactions,” Comer said. “It should never have taken us threatening to hold a hearing and conduct a transcribed interview with an official under the penalty of perjury for Treasury to finally accommodate part of our request.”
Comer has been pressing the Treasury since January, when the letter was sent, to comply with his request. In early March, he called on Treasury Department official Jonathan Davidson, the assistant secretary for legislative affairs, to come before the committee in a transcribed interview explaining why they have not provided the requested information. The interview has been postponed now that the Treasury has agreed to comply.
According to Comer, Congress “has had access to these reports but the Biden administration changed the rules out of the blue to restrict our ability to conduct oversight.”
Davidson had sent a letter to Comer on March 3rd in response to the committee’s request. In the letter he laid out the Treasury’s process to ensure that “the law enforcement sensitive material is identified and handled properly.”
“The Department has been working to complete all necessary review, including consultation with law enforcement agencies,” the letter read. “These processes ensure that sensitive material extraneous to the Committee’s inquiry is not inadvertently disclosed and that law enforcement sensitive material is identified and handled appropriately.”
“All of these processes—which are designed to ensure proper protection of potential or ongoing investigations and other law enforcement interests—are already well underway for your request, but they take time,” the letter went on. “The Department is working to complete these processes as soon as possible and consistent with the timeframes for processing similar requests in the past, including requests received from committee chairs in the prior Congress that took months to complete.”
Hunter Biden had been under federal investigation since 2018 due to his tax affairs. The investigation was based on the suspicious activity reports on his foreign transactions. The transactions involved financial transactions from “China and other foreign nations” according to Fox News.
Along with the request to the Treasury Department, the committee has also collected documents and records on the Biden Family’s business dealings. The Bank of America was subpoenaed by the committee for more than a decade of records of Hunter Biden’s business associates, which include Rob Walker.
Walker had worked with Hunter, and President Biden’s brother Jim, along with their associates James Gillar and Tony Bobulinksi in a joint-venture called Sinohawk Holdings. The joint-venture was meant to be a partnership between the Biden family, their two business associates, and the Chinese energy firm CEFC.
“According to banks documents we’ve already obtained, we know one company owned by a Biden associate received a $3 million wire from a Chinese energy company two months after Joe Biden left the vice presidency,” Comer said. “Soon after, hundreds of thousands of dollars in payouts went to members of the Biden family.”
Comer vowed that the committee will continue to “follow the money trail” to figure out the “extent of the Biden family’s business schemes.”