(NewsNation) — Attorneys for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, responded in kind to a letter from Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., seeking documents in a House panel probe of his foreign business pursuits.
Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, had earlier sent the panel’s first official requests for documents to Hunter, the president’s brother, James Biden, and their former business manager.
Comer’s letter said the panel is investigating “President Biden’s connections to certain international and domestic business transactions and practices, including family members who peddled influence to generate millions of dollars for the Biden family.”
The letter from Hunter Biden’s attorneys countered Comer, saying the request for documents does not fall within the committee’s oversight power.
“As your Letter is a sweeping attempt to collect an expansive array of documents and communications from President Biden and his family, I write to explain that the Committee on Oversight and Accountability lacks a legitimate legislative purpose and oversight basis for requesting such records from Mr. Biden, who is a private citizen,” the letter obtained by NewsNation states.
According to Hunter Biden’s attorneys, courts require that Congress has a proper legislative purpose to investigate.
“Investigations conducted solely for the personal aggrandizement of the investigators or to ‘punish’ those investigated are indefensible,” the letter states.
The House panel requested any record “designated classified” the two may possess and any communications between the president or James Biden and his wife, Sara Jones Biden, and Hunter Biden between Jan. 20, 2009, and Jan. 20, 2021.
Comer’s letter states, “the Committee is investigating President Biden’s knowledge of and role in these foreign business deals to assess whether he has compromised our national security at the expense of the American people.”
Hunter Biden’s attorneys responded, saying, “peddling your own inaccurate and baseless conclusions under the guise of a real investigation, turns the Committee into “Wonderland” and you into the Queen of Hearts shouting, “sentence first, verdict afterwards.”
They continue, writing, “While your Letter attempts to demonstrate ‘legislative purpose’ for investigating Mr. Biden, it fails nevertheless to address that the Committee’s scope of oversight is limited when dealing with private persons like our client.”
On Wednesday, the House Oversight Committee heard testimony from former Twitter employees involved in the social media platform’s handling of reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop in the weeks before the 2020 election.
Earlier in February, lawyers for Hunter Biden asked the Justice Department in a letter to investigate close allies of former President Donald Trump and others who accessed and disseminated personal data from a laptop that a computer repair shop owner says was dropped off at his Delaware store in 2019.
The White House has sought to discredit the Republican probes into Hunter Biden, calling them “divorced-from-reality political stunts.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.