Raskin Blasts Trump ‘Sexual Assault’ and ’91 Felony Criminal Charges’ In Blistering Letter Trashing Biden Probe ‘Abuse of Power’
House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Ranking Member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) blasted former President Donald Trump’s “sexual assault, 91 felony criminal charges,” and other deficiencies in a scathing letter denouncing the “abuse of power” in the probe into President Joe Biden.
At issue is the latest move by the investigation that House Republicans have expanded into an impeachment inquiry despite widespread acknowledgment by journalists and even other Republicans that there is “no evidence” of wrongdoing by President Biden.
In a letter to Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY), Raskin tore into the probe’s latest demand for records:
Last month, at the conclusion of the first hearing on the impeachment inquiry declared by former Speaker Kevin McCarthy, you announced that you and Chairman Jim Jordan were issuing three subpoenas to obtain bank records for Hunter Biden, James Biden, Eric Schwerin, and their business entities.
These subpoenas seek a decade’s worth of personal financial information of private citizens and are completely untethered to any plausible theory of an impeachable offense. Your decision to issue a blanket demand for “all financial records” from 2014 to the present, without any effort to define or tailor the request, makes obvious that these subpoenas are nothing but a fishing expedition many miles away from the legislative shore and thus an egregious abuse of this Committee’s authority.
This continuing random search for content approach is profoundly troubling, especially in light of your blatant misrepresentations about the contents of these bank records and willingness to use this investigation to promote salacious and baseless accusations against the President’s children and grandchildren.
All of these actions are, in your words distantly spoken before the start of this Congress, “very counter to a credible investigation.”
For several pages, Rep. Raskin details the actions of Comer’s committee and contrasts them with their own prior statements and committee precedents.
The letter wraps up with a blistering summation laying the motivation for the probe at Trump’s feet:
The sweeping overbreadth of these subpoenas makes clear their true purpose: to continue this baseless and voyeuristic fishing expedition; heckle the President with distortions and cherry-picked facts; distract from Donald Trump’s four criminal indictments on 91 different felony criminal charges and recent judgments that he sexually assaulted a woman in New York and fraudulently inflated the value of his businesses; and attempt to boost Mr. Trump’s prospects for election in 2024. These subpoenas represent a stunning abuse of the Committee’s subpoena authority and create a deeply troubling precedent of using the power of the gavel to demand unfettered access to private citizens’ irrelevant financial records.
Read the full letter here.
