Hunter Biden declines to attend public hearing on House impeachment inquiry

• Hunter Biden declined an invitation to testify in public next week as part of House Republicans' impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.
• Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, told House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer said that neither he nor his client can attend because of a scheduling conflict with one of Hunter's ongoing criminal cases.
• Hunter Biden sat for a closed-door deposition with the GOP investigators on Feb. 28.

Hunter Biden on Wednesday declined an invitation to testify in public next week as part of House Republicans' impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, in a letter to House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said that neither he nor his client can attend because of a scheduling conflict with one of Hunter's ongoing criminal cases.

But that's "the least of the issues," said Lowell, who blasted the planned public hearing as an act of desperation by Republicans whose impeachment probe of the Democratic incumbent president has come under increasing scrutiny.

"Your blatant planned-for-media event is not a proper proceeding but an obvious attempt to throw a Hail Mary pass after the game has ended," Lowell wrote.

Comer responded later Wednesday that the Oversight panel "has called Hunter Biden's bluff," and that the hearing will move forward as planned.

"Hunter Biden for months stated he wanted a public hearing, but now that one has been offered alongside his business associates that he worked with for years, he is refusing to come," Comer said in a statement to NBC News.

Hunter Biden sat for a closed-door deposition with the GOP investigators on Feb. 28. In that hourslong interview, he strongly disputed allegations at the