Hunter Biden Leaves Republicans Hanging At High-Profile Hearing

WASHINGTON ― Hunter Biden’s decision not to testify before the Republican impeachment inquiry against his father made Wednesday’s hearing remarkably dull by recent standards.

House Oversight Committee chair James Comer (R-Ky.) left a spot at the witness table for the president’s son, holding out hope he might change his RSVP.

“Maybe he will show up,” Comer said in his opening remarks. “He has said he isn’t, but he loves saying one thing and doing another.”

But the chair remained empty for hours as Comer and his colleagues rehashed the same corruption accusations they’ve levied against President Joe Biden since last year. Republicans have struggled to substantiate the allegations, and it looks unlikely Republicans will draft articles of impeachment against the president.

“With any luck today marks the end of perhaps the most spectacular failure in the history of congressional investigations, the effort to find a high crime or misdemeanor committed by Joe Biden and then to impeach him for it,” Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the committee’s top Democrat, said in an opening statement.

The hearing saw no major outbursts, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) decided not to bring back her posters with compromising images taken from Hunter Biden’s laptop, and Hunter Biden did not crash the proceedings like he did in January.

The biggest accusation, which Comer, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and other Republicans raised on Wednesday, is that in 2015 Joe Biden used the vice presidency to get a Ukrainian prosecutor fired in order to protect Burisma, a Ukrainian gas company that paid Hunter Biden millions to serve on its board.

Several State Department officials responsible for U.S. policy toward Ukraine have previously testified,