Biden refuses to testify in House Republicans’ flailing impeachment inquiry

The White House has rejected calls from House Republicans for President Joe Biden to testify in their flailing impeachment inquiry.

Special counsel to the president Richard Sauber wrote in a letter on Monday to House Intelligence Committee chair James Comer that last month’s invitation to the president to testify was a “partisan charade”.

House Republicans have been unsuccessfully looking for incriminating evidence that Mr Biden used his position to enrich his family and aid their foreign business dealings, including unsubstantiated allegations of bribery.

“Your Committee’s purported ‘impeachment inquiry’ has succeeded only in turning up abundant evidence that, in fact, the President has done nothing wrong,” Mr Sauber wrote.

“Your insistence on peddling these false and unsupported allegations despite ample evidence to the contrary makes one thing about your investigation abundantly clear: The facts do not matter to you,” he added.

Mr Sauber is leaving the White House next month, possibly revealing that House Republicans’ efforts to impeach Mr Biden are coming to an end.

Mr Sauber joined the White House in 2022 to lead its response to congressional probes as Democrats were preparing to possibly lose their majorities in Congress in the then-upcoming midterms. In the end, they narrowly lost the House and managed to hold on to the Senate.

Mr Comer had asked Mr Biden to “explain, under oath”, what role he may have played in his family’s businesses.

The chair has argued that the Bidens used their family name to do business, with the committee trying to connect a few phone calls or dinner meetings between Mr Biden and his son Hunter alongside his business partners when Mr Biden was vice-president or out of office.

After interviewing dozens of witnesses, such as Hunter Biden and the president’s brother, James Biden, the committee has been unable to provide any evidence linking the president to his family businesses or to show that he benefitted from their dealings.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.