A parliamentary hearing on the son of American President Joe Biden, a favorite target of the Republican opposition, turned into a free-for-all on Wednesday after the surprise appearance of Hunter Biden.
A committee of the House of Representatives was discussing in the morning a resolution aimed at finding the fifty-year-old guilty of obstructing the investigative prerogatives of Congress when he burst into Congress, flanked by his lawyer.
Hunter Biden, facing two indictments including one for tax fraud, is accused by conservatives of having done questionable business in Ukraine and China by capitalizing on his father’s networks and name.
He is also being criticized by Republicans for his refusal to participate in a closed-door hearing before Congress on his financial interests abroad – Hunter Biden, for his part, is calling for a public hearing.
“Fear”?
“Who bribed Hunter Biden to be here today?” said Nancy Mace, Republican elected official from South Carolina.
“You are the embodiment of white privilege, coming here before the committee, spitting in our faces, ignoring a parliamentary subpoena to be heard. What are you afraid of? You have no balls,” she went so far as to tell the president’s son.
“We can hear it now. Let’s vote and listen to Hunter Biden. What are you afraid of?” replied a Democratic elected official.
The elected Republican from Arizona Andy Biggs then intervened to exhort, with a stern look, his colleagues to stop interrupting each other and not to behave like “a bunch of morons”.
Shortly after, when Trumpist elected official Marjorie Taylor Greene was preparing to speak, Hunter Biden left the room.
“What a coward,” she commented.
Outside, Abbe Lowell, the lawyer for the president’s son, accused the Republicans of wanting to reach his father, a candidate for re-election, through him. The November election should pit Mr. Biden against the great favorite of the right, Donald Trump.
Republicans are trying to pass a resolution against “someone who offered to publicly answer all their questions. The question here is: what are they afraid of?,” Mr. Lowell told the cameras.
Hostilities
At the same time, another committee was holding a hearing on a possible indictment of Mr. Biden’s Minister of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, accused by the American right of being responsible for the “migrant crisis” at the border between the United States and Mexico.
Mr Mayorkas was not present.
“The elements at our disposal say it clearly: Minister Mayorkas is the architect of the devastation that we have been witnessing for almost three years,” denounced the elected Republican from Tennessee, Mark Green, at the opening of the hearing .
Nearly 10,000 migrants arrived every day at the US border from Mexico in December, a record and “a humanitarian disaster” according to conservatives.
The American executive emphasizes that its request for an additional $14 billion to secure the border has been blocked in Congress for months.
For Alejandro Mayorkas to be removed from office, a majority of lawmakers in the House of Representatives must first vote on his impeachment before the Senate, which in turn must find a two-thirds majority to complete the process.
A practically impossible scenario given that the Republicans only hold a very slim majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate has a Democratic majority.
With these hearings, Republicans are intensifying hostilities against the Democratic president in this election year.
Conservatives in the House have also launched an impeachment investigation against Joe Biden, whom they accuse of having used his influence when he was vice-president of Barack Obama (2009-2017) to allow his son Hunter to make business in China and Ukraine.
The president, his son and the Democrats deny these accusations outright.
