The incoming chairman of the House Intelligence Committee on Sunday was noncommittal about the possibility of an investigation into President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and the much-hyped “laptop from hell.”
With Republicans narrowly gaining a majority in the House of Representatives, the top Republicans on both the Oversight and Judicial House committees have vowed to make investigations into Hunter Biden’s business dealings a top priority of theirs in the new term.
“In the 118th Congress, this committee will evaluate the status of Joe Biden’s relationship with his family’s foreign partners and whether he is a President who is compromised or swayed by foreign dollars and influence,” Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the incoming chair of the Oversight Committee, said last week. “I want to be clear: This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that’s where the committee will focus in this next Congress.”
ADVERTISEMENT
While the GOP is seemingly poised to devote much of its energy over the next two years to tarnishing the president’s image and character ahead of the 2024 election, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH) appeared a bit more measured on whether his committee would make the laptop a focal point.
“I want to move on to what else the Republicans might be looking at. We’ve heard about Hunter Biden’s laptop,” ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz confronted Turner on Sunday’s broadcast of This Week.
“Congressman Turner, do you view that as a matter for the Intelligence Committee,” she continued. “What are they looking at there?”
The Ohio congressman, though, didn’t appear all that eager to jump into the hot-button issue that has all but consumed right-wing media for years.
“So, I think, you know, one thing that’s going to be very, very positive about this Congress is, we’re going to get back to the committees working again,” he responded. “And what the committee is working on, they’re going to be focusing on their areas of jurisdiction. We’re going to take the intelligence committee from what was an impeachment committee, a partisan committee, back to national security.”
He went on to say that “there certainly are issues with respect to Hunter Biden’s laptop that are going to have to be looked at,” only for Raddatz to interject.
“Impeachment issues, you believe?” she wondered, prompting Turner to clarify that he didn’t want to focus on impeachment in his committee.
“The impeachment issue was Adam Schiff, Nancy Pelosi. And where our committee was taken off the rails,” he added, referencing the efforts at impeaching former President Donald Trump.
From there, Turner seemingly avoided the issue of Hunter Biden altogether. “Our committee is going to focus on national security and our adversaries. We have real adversaries where the committee hasn’t been focused again,” he stated.
“We do need to, however, do oversight to the intelligence community as to what they are doing, and we will do that, and we’ll do it vigorously,” Turner concluded. “But we’re going to be their partner also in making sure they have the tools that we need. We need to move at the speed of our adversaries, and we’re going to start doing that.”
