House GOP Calls Off Trump Financial Probe That Revealed Foreign Spending At His Hotel

Topline

The Republican-controlled House is ending a yearslong probe into former President Donald Trump’s finances and whether his businesses benefited while he was president, The New York Times reported, as GOP lawmakers focus on investigating the Biden family’s connections to Chinese businesses.

Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer (R-KY) during a hearing on Capitol Hill on February 8, … [+] 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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Key Facts

The House Oversight Committee will not enforce a court-supervised settlement agreement that required Trump’s former accounting firm, Mazars USA, to provide the committee with Trump’s financial documents, Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told the Times.

Comer claimed he was unaware of the nuances of the investigation into Trump’s finances led by the committee when it was under Democrats’ control, telling the Times “I honestly didn’t even know who or what Mazars was.”

Instead, Comer said he is opting to use the committee’s resources on investigating “money the Bidens received from China”—likely referring to planned business deals involving President Joe Biden’s son Hunter and brother James.

Previous documents produced by Mazars when the House was under Democratic control showed that foreign governments spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in a matter of months on stays at Trump’s Washington hotel as they sought to influence Trump’s foreign policy decisions.

Chief Critic

Oversight Committee Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) accused Comer of coordinating with Trump’s legal team to kill the probe in a letter sent to the chairman on Sunday. “In the face of mounting evidence that foreign governments sought to influence the Trump administration . . . you and President Trump’s representatives appear to have acted in coordination to bury evidence of such misconduct,” Raskin wrote. Comer denied any collaboration with Trump’s lawyers and said Raskin was having a “meltdown” over Comer’s investigation into “the Biden family money trail from China,” he told the Times.

Key Background

The Oversight Committee had investigated Trump for potential conflicts of interest associated with hundreds of trips he and other government officials took to his family-owned properties during his time in office. The committee revealed in October that the Trump Organization charged Secret Service agents as much as $1,185 per night, nearly five times the typical $240 rate, to stay at Trump International in Washington during 40 hotel trips from 2017 through 2021, among $2 million the Secret Service spent at Trump’s properties during his time in office, according to a report by the nonprofit watchdog Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington. Since Republicans won control of the House in November and Comer was appointed chairman of the Oversight Committee, its focus has shifted to a broad range of investigations into Biden and his family’s finances. Comer recently issued a subpoena for bank records of three private individuals with ties to the Biden family spanning a 14-year period, including an associate of Hunter Biden, John R. Walker, who had dealings with a Chinese energy company the younger Biden also worked with. That company, CEFC China Energy, paid $4.8 million to entities under Hunter Biden’s control over a 14-month period for consulting work beginning in 2017, the Washington Post reported. Biden has repeatedly denied having any contact with his son’s business partners.

Tangent

The investigation into the links between China and the Bidens is part of a flurry of probes the Republican-led House has launched into the president and his family since winning the majority in November. The Justice Department and its handling of accused January 6 rioters, Biden’s Covid-19 and immigration policies and the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan are also the subjects of ongoing GOP-led investigations.

Surprising Fact

Mazars ended its relationship with Trump last year, casting doubt on the credibility of the information the Trump Organization provided in order for the firm to compile financial statements. The separation was prompted by the New York Attorney General’s investigation into the Trump family, which led to a civil lawsuit accusing Trump and his children of falsely inflating the value of their assets to obtain more favorable loans.