Members of Congress hearing Hunter Biden's closed-door deposition on Capitol Hill Wednesday, discussed their goals with reporters before the critical moment for Republicans as their impeachment inquiry into his father and the family's business affairs teeters on the brink of collapse.
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00:00 Hunter, what do you hope to tell the committee today?
00:03 Mr. Biden, can you hear me?
00:05 Thank you very much for being here this morning. Obviously, this is a big day.
00:09 This is the day that the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees will be deposing Hunter Biden.
00:15 We're deposing Hunter Biden because he's a key witness in our investigation of President Joe Biden.
00:21 I'm ready to try to begin to close this investigation.
00:27 This has been a very difficult investigation. This administration has been very obstructive.
00:31 They haven't been cooperative. I feel like we're having to battle the Department of Justice and the FBI on a daily basis to get basic information.
00:39 Many of our witnesses that we brought in would be what I would consider hostile witnesses.
00:44 But at the end of the day, I think with every interview, we've learned new information.
00:49 And the basis of what we've learned is that the Bidens didn't have a legitimate business.
00:55 Their business was selling access to Joe Biden, the brand.
00:59 We have a lot of questions for Hunter Biden, specifically revolving around the 100-plus suspicious activity reports he got,
01:07 specifically around what some of his associates have testified, that Joe Biden communicated frequently with all of these shady characters who were wiring the family money.
01:18 So we have a lot of questions for Hunter Biden based on financial crimes that he was being investigated for by the IRS,
01:25 Criminal International Crimes Division, Shapley and Ziegler.
01:30 But most importantly, we'd like to get this entire investigation done.
01:34 It's cost a lot of time and money, and they've evaded up until now giving us honest answers.
01:41 Even a month ago when Hunter Biden appeared on the North Capitol, he did so to say some things that his father wasn't.
01:51 He never said he I didn't tell him. He never said he wasn't involved.
01:54 He simply said he wasn't an equity partner and so on.
01:57 That nuanced statement will be cross-examined today to find out not what he wasn't, but what he was.
02:05 Since he was someone who was seeing the correspondence, he was someone that was transporting his son to and from important business opportunities at government expense.
02:16 And most importantly, he was aware of things that he previously said he wasn't aware of.
02:22 The constitutional standard for impeachment is treason, bribery and other high crimes and misdemeanors.
02:30 We're still waiting for our Republican friends to articulate what they think the high crime and misdemeanor is.
02:40 In this case, we have gotten extremely far afield from the constitutional standard.
02:46 Nobody can state on their side what they think Joe Biden did, even as a private citizen, that would constitute some kind of criminal offense.
02:59 You know, every other witness that we've spoken to has confirmed this basic conclusion that Joe Biden was not involved in Hunter Biden's business ventures.
03:12 He did not profit from Hunter Biden's business ventures, and he rendered no official favors or benefits to Hunter Biden's business ventures.
03:23 So I hope that we will test those propositions, and if we are satisfied that he and the dozen other witnesses we've spoken to are telling a coherent and credible story, then this thing is over.