US House Republicans step up probes of Biden

US House Republicans have stepped up their probes of Democratic President Joe Biden's family in a move that the White House dismissed as a politically motivated attack. 

The Republican chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, James Comer, on Thursday asked Biden's son and brother for documents related to the family's international business dealings.

Comer said that the committee had gathered evidence showing that "Biden family members attempted to sell access around the world, including (to) individuals who were connected to the Chinese Communist Party, to enrich themselves to the detriment of American interests."

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The White House, in a memo distributed to allies and seen by Reuters, dismissed the move as a "political stunt."

The White House spokesman replied that instead of focusing on Biden's family, US Republican lawmakers ought to be "working with President Biden to address the top priorities of the American people."

"Instead of working with President Biden to address the top priorities of the American people - fighting inflation and lowering costs, creating jobs, boosting manufacturing and infrastructure, and protecting and expanding people's health care and rights – this is what House Republicans are focused on," wrote Ian Sims.

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Also on Thursday the newly formed Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government alleged that there is partisan bias in federal law enforcement.

The Select Subcommittee in its first hearing to review Republican claims that the Justice Department and FBI show anti-Republican bias.

The two moves are considered some of the first Republicans have taken since winning the majority in the House of Representatives in November's election.

Media reports said the allegations against Biden and his family are another attempt by Republicans to damage the Democratic president's image as he gears up to launch his reelection bid for 2024.

The moves against Biden followed a day-long Wednesday hearing at which GOP lawmakers alleged that Twitter, government officials and the news media acted to suppress a New York Post story about the contents of a laptop computer said to belong to Hunter Biden two weeks before Biden defeated Trump in the 2020 election.

None of the three former Twitter executives who testified said that government officials played any role in their decisions, and the committee presented no other evidence to show that government officials had influenced Twitter's decision-making.

In 2021, Hunter Biden opened up about his drug addiction and other scandals in a memoir titled Beautiful Things.

The book chronicled the 52-year-old president's son's decades-long struggle with substance abuse, personal scandals, unceremonious exit from the US military as well as his shady dealings in Ukraine and other countries.

“I’ve bought crack cocaine on the streets of Washington, DC, and cooked up my own inside a hotel bungalow in Los Angeles. I’ve been so desperate for a drink that I couldn’t make the one-block walk between a liquor store and my apartment without uncapping the bottle to take a swig,” he wrote in the prologue of the book, insisting that throughout the decades of his addiction, his family never gave up on him and always showed their support.

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