House Republicans have been facing growing pressure to show progress on their investigations into the finances of President Joe Biden’s family.
On Wednesday, they finally detailed some new findings… but you’d never know it from the media coverage.
The smoking gun, according to the GOP, is recently obtained financial records connected to the president’s son Hunter Biden, brother James Biden and a growing number of associates who received millions of dollars in payments from foreign entities in China and Romania. Critics say that the payments may have been part of a wide-ranging scheme to enrich themselves off the family name.
To help them get here, Congressional Republicans relied on more than 150 suspicious activity reports as a roadmap to follow what they call the Bidens’ complicated financial money trail.
The confidential reports, called SARs for short, are often routine, with larger financial transactions automatically flagged to the government. The existence of a SARs report is not evidence on its own of misconduct… but a SAR may contain evidence.
Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee leading the probe, said Wednesday that other types of financial records obtained through congressional subpoenas and lawsuits have now become the focus of their investigation.
The White House dismissed the whole investigation as “yet another political stunt.”
The media quickly got in line, and completely ignored the trove of reports.
One observer pointed out that legacy media has been tweeting about New York Republican George Santos — a low-ranking U.S. representative — more than they’ve been tweeting about potential crimes linked to the immediate family of the U.S. president.
In fact, as of Wednesday morning, some legacy outlets had yet to mention these revelations at all. Others, like CNN and Politico, were simply slower to catch up.
Take a look —
Not a single tweet about bombshell Biden family bribery schemes laid out in lengthy presser by @GOPoversight from:
Washington Post (2 on Santos)
NYT (3 on Santos)
Politico (2 on Santos)
CNN (1 on Santos)
MSNBC (2 on Santos)
ABC News (3 on Santos)
CBS News (2 on Santos)— Julie Kelly 🇺🇸 (@julie_kelly2) May 10, 2023
Based on the financial records we have obtained via bank subpoenas, we can now confidently trace at least $10 million in total from foreign nationals’ and their related companies going to the Biden family, their business associates, and their companies.
— Oversight Committee (@GOPoversight) May 10, 2023
Republicans vowed after winning the House majority last year that they would use their subpoena power to investigate foreign entities that did business with the family during Biden’s time as vice president and during the Trump administration, including a specific focus on his son Hunter.
This all comes as Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business work are already under federal investigation, with a grand jury in Delaware reportedly making a charging decision in the next few months. And while Hunter Biden never held an official position on the presidential campaign or in the White House, his membership on the board of a Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have long raised questions about whether he traded on his father’s public service, including reported references in his emails to the “big guy.”
However, an attorney for Hunter Biden on Wednesday dismissed the years of Republicans’ investigations as “chasing conspiracies.”
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.