Wyoming Republican Rep. Harriet Hageman, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, told The Federalist in an exclusive interview after Hunter Biden’s testimony this week that the president’s son used addiction to escape difficult questions.
Whenever Biden received tough questions, Hageman described the response as “I don’t know, I don’t remember, because I was addicted at that time.” One prominent example came when Biden could not recall a meeting between his father and Chinese business leaders. Biden also played ignorant about the “exact amount” the family received from Chinese companies while claiming every gift and transaction was “completely legal” and “incredibly ethical.”
“He was extremely well prepared,” Hageman said of Biden, who testified in a closed-door deposition Wednesday. “His attorneys had spent probably days and days and days with him to make sure he had his story down very well.”
“Yet when we tried to get into details,” Hageman added, he mostly said, “‘Well, I don’t have a memory of that.’” Biden’s attorneys were also “incredibly aggressive at trying to deflect difficult questions.”
Hageman pressed Biden on his qualifications to handle multimillion-dollar deals with international business partners, considering his problems with addiction.
“In terms of what we have seen with some of the photographs, the information from the laptop, the information from your book, I would say that I don’t believe that that represents someone who would be responsible and considered a professional,” Hageman said in her Wednesday questioning. Biden responded with what Hageman characterized in her interview with The Federalist as “shockingly arrogant.”
“There are a lot of people around this room who suffer from alcoholism that are still in this room and that they’re still functioning,” Biden said.
Hageman asked whether Biden informed associates about his substance abuse.
“It was fairly obvious I had a problem,” Biden responded.
Hageman said the testimony corroborated what was already obvious to lawmakers, which was that “all of those board positions that he had all came back to the fact that his last name is ‘Biden,’” because the younger Biden didn’t have anything to offer “other than the access to his father.”
In Wednesday’s deposition, Hunter Biden confirmed such access to his father, which other witnesses have already testified to before lawmakers.
[RELATED: 8 Unbelievable Claims From Hunter Biden’s Congressional Deposition]
On a trip to California, Hunter Biden conceded his father had coffee at a hotel with Tony Bobuslinki, a business partner-turned whistleblower who accused the president of being “compromised” by the Chinese Communist Party.
“He met him in the lobby of the hotel,” Hunter Biden said, according to the transcript of the interview released Thursday.
Bobulinski told lawmakers earlier in February that Joe Biden was “the brand” his family sold to foreign adversaries as the former vice president prepared another run for the White House.
“[Biden’s] family’s foreign influence peddling operation — from China to Ukraine and elsewhere — sold out to foreign actors who were seeking to gain influence and access to Joe Biden and the United States government,” Bobulisnki said. “Joe Biden was more than a participant in and beneficiary of his family’s business, he was an enabler, despite being buffered by a complex scheme to maintain plausible deniability.”
On Wednesday, Hunter Biden also confirmed that he repeatedly put his father on speakerphone when in the company of clients. Last summer, former family business partner Devon Archer testified Hunter Biden put foreign businessmen and potential investors on speakerphone with Joe Biden at least two dozen times.
“Yes, that probably did happen,” Hunter Biden said. “I always answer his call, based upon my life’s experience.”
House Republicans interviewed the president’s son as part of an impeachment inquiry after investigators found the Bidens funneling millions between more than 20 shell companies. Most were set up when Joe Biden was vice president.
Hunter Biden’s testimony not only corroborates previous witnesses but also contradicts his father’s vehement denials from the presidential campaign trail. Joe Biden repeatedly claimed prior to the Oval Office that he never spoke business with his son, “or with anyone else,” and even fat-shamed an Iowa voter who approached the subject in 2019. At a December town hall, the voter pressed the former vice president about Hunter Biden’s lucrative position on the board of Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company, despite no prior experience in the industry.
“You’re a damn liar, man,” Joe Biden said, and went on to challenge the voter to push-ups.
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