WASHINGTON — The House Oversight Committee took its first significant action under new Republican leadership on Wednesday, pressing the Treasury Department for information about President Biden’s family finances and demanding that Twitter executives appear before lawmakers next month to address accusations that they sought to hide information about the Bidens’ business dealings.
Representative James R. Comer, Republican of Kentucky and the new chairman of the committee, has pledged for months to investigate Mr. Biden’s family and its business connections. His staff members obtained the contents of a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the president’s son, whose business activities are under federal investigation.
But now that Mr. Comer has subpoena power, he is in a position to expand and escalate his inquiry. He has repeatedly said that his focus will be on the occupant of the White House. “This is an investigation of Joe Biden,” he has said.
The four letters Mr. Comer sent on Wednesday do not include subpoenas. The first is a letter to Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen seeking information about so-called suspicious activity reports, or SARs, involving the business dealings of Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president’s brother, that the committee has yet to obtain.
Despite their sinister-sounding name, the Treasury Department notes that such reports are “preliminary and unverified tip-and-lead information” that could result in a serious investigation or prove innocuous. Banks are required to file them for any transaction that could potentially be a red flag for money laundering, including any cash transaction of more than $10,000.
Electing a New Speaker of the House
Representative Kevin McCarthy won the speakership after a revolt within the Republican Party set off a long stretch of unsuccessful votes.
“The Treasury Department’s longstanding practice was to provide these reports to Congress, but the Biden administration has restricted access to them, raising questions about a possible effort to hide the Biden network’s suspicious business dealings,” Mr. Comer wrote, referring to the agency’s refusal to provide the material to him in recent months.
In addition to a request for information from Ms. Yellen, Mr. Comer is also seeking information from former Twitter executives who he said were involved in censoring a New York Post article from their platform concerning Hunter Biden’s business activities before the 2020 election.
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The letters ask those executives to testify at a hearing the week of Feb. 6.
“For the past two years, the Biden administration and Big Tech worked overtime to hide information about the Biden family’s suspicious business schemes and Joe Biden’s involvement,” Mr. Comer said in a statement. “Now that Democrats no longer have one-party rule in Washington, oversight and accountability are coming.”
The letters were sent to Vijaya Gadde, the former chief legal officer of Twitter; James Baker, the former deputy general counsel; and Yoel Roth, the company’s former global head of trust and safety. Each of the letters asks the executives to respond by Jan. 18 about attendance at a hearing before the panel next month.
“Your attendance is necessary because of your role in suppressing Americans’ access to information about the Biden family on Twitter shortly before the 2020 election,” the letter said.
Ian Sams, the White House’s spokesman on investigations, portrayed the inquires as a partisan exercise.
“In their first week as a governing majority, House Republicans have not taken any meaningful action to address inflation and lower Americans’ costs,” he said. “Yet they’re jumping out of the gate with political stunts driven by the most extreme MAGA members of their caucus in an effort to get attention on Fox News.”
