President Joe Biden laughed off a question from a reporter last week about House Republican demands that he turn over his bank records to congressional committees investigating his family's dubious foreign business dealings, the Daily Mail reported.
The president's reaction strongly suggested that he is not taking seriously the ongoing congressional probes into his family's questionable financial gains from foreign entities and individuals and whether those deals have compromised Biden.
Those Biden bank records, should House Republicans prevail in their quest to obtain them, would likely feature prominently in a seemingly inevitable impeachment inquiry that could be launched as soon as this month.
On Thursday, President Biden delivered remarks at the Federal Emergency Management Agency's headquarters in Washington D.C. in regard to Hurricane Idalia, which had just struck Florida and other Southeastern states, and the devastatingly deadly wildfires that scorched part of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands.
Biden took a handful of questions from reporters afterward, and one reporter asked, "Will you give your bank records to Congress, as Speaker McCarthy requests?"
The president laughed in response to that query and, rather than answer, instead replied, "Let’s talk about why I’m here."
The New York Post reported on President Biden's overt deflection on the question about turning over his bank records to Congress and exposed the unseriousness of that response by highlighting how he, without objection, answered several other questions unrelated to the hurricane or wildfires at that same event.
The outlet further noted that just a few weeks earlier, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) had publicly called upon Biden to "give us his bank statements" as part of the ongoing congressional committee probes into allegations of criminal corruption and influence-peddling by the Biden family during Biden's tenure as vice president.
McCarthy's demand coincided with a memo released by the House Oversight Committee that detailed what had been discovered thus far about the Biden family's financial dealings via reviews of bank records and statements obtained from some of the Biden family's former business associates and partners.
That memo showed how tens of millions of dollars had incrementally flowed into dozens of shell companies and LLCs established by various Biden family members from foreign sources, often after being diverted and funneled through multiple accounts in order to disguise the foreign origin of the funds.
"During Joe Biden’s vice presidency, Hunter Biden sold him as 'the brand' to reap millions from oligarchs in Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine," Chairman James Comer (R-KY) said in a statement at that time. "It appears no real services were provided other than access to the Biden network, including Joe Biden himself. And Hunter Biden seems to have delivered. This is made clear by meals at Café Milano where then-Vice President Joe Biden dined with oligarchs from around the world who had sent money to his son."
"It’s clear Joe Biden knew about his son’s business dealings and allowed himself to be 'the brand' sold to enrich the Biden family while he was Vice President of the United States," the chairman added. "The House Oversight Committee will continue to follow the money trail and obtain witness testimony to determine whether foreign actors targeted the Bidens, President Biden is compromised or corrupt, and our national security is threatened."
Meanwhile, as President Biden dismissively laughed off the question about House Republicans seeking access to his bank records, an NBC News report on Friday revealed that Biden's White House appears to be taking the prospect of an impending impeachment inquiry at least somewhat seriously with the establishment of a dedicated "war room" focused on addressing that potential challenge to the presidency.
The effort involves the formation of a team of around two dozen attorneys, aides, and staffers who are studying how prior Democratic presidents fended off Republican impeachment efforts and formulating strategies and tactics that will be deployed to defend against the current effort, namely by deriding it as being entirely evidence-free and purely politically motivated.
