U.S. House Oversight chair’s agenda: Hunter Biden, COVID origins, classified documents

WASHINGTON — House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chair James Comer on Monday previewed his priorities for this Congress, which he says will include a heavy focus on the handling of classified documents, the origins of the COVID-19 virus and what he described as possible “influence peddling” by Hunter Biden.

The Kentucky Republican addressed reporters and the public at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., taking audience questions and vowing to lead a “substantive committee.”

The panel will begin its work this session with a hearing Wednesday that will examine potential fraud and abuse of federal pandemic relief dollars, including small business loans and unspent funds left over in federal accounts.

“Unfortunately, over the last two years, there hasn’t been a single hearing in the Oversight Committee dealing with the pandemic spending, even though [the federal government] spent record amounts of money. That’s very concerning. I feel like we’re two years behind in oversight. So we’re gonna have to go back two years to try to get caught up,” Comer said.

The Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis under Democratic control during last Congress held hearings including on efforts to prevent pandemic relief fraud and examining anti-poverty pandemic initiatives.

For example, issues have surfaced after the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP loans, that were meant to keep struggling business owners afloat during the economic tumult of the global pandemic. 

About 92% of those loans have been forgiven partially or in full, including the funds given to wealthy companies, according to an analysis of Small Business Administration data by NPR.

Classified documents

Reflecting on recent scandals involving classified government material found in the homes and personal offices of former and current U.S. leaders, Comer said Republicans and Democrats alike “all agree there’s a problem.”

After disclosures this month that classified documents were located in President Joe Biden’s think tank office and home, Comer sent letters to the White House and the U.S. Secret Service, requesting more information about who might have had access to the material.

Comer told the press Monday that the White House and the committee have not yet discussed a time to meet about the matter. 

“We have to reform the way that documents are boxed up when they leave the president and vice president’s office and follow them in the private sector,” he said. 

The committee, as soon as this week, plans to meet with the general counsel for the National Archives and Records Administration, the agency tasked with managing presidential documents.

Comer said he “wasn’t alarmed” by the news that Biden had classified documents in his Penn Biden Center office dating back to his vice presidency and in his Delaware home dating back to his days in the Senate. Department of Justice officials searched Biden’s home earlier this month, in what the president said was a voluntary search.

“I just thought it was ironic that the president was quick to call Donald Trump irresponsible for his handling of classified documents, and then he has the same thing happen,” Comer said.

The FBI in August executed a search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Florida home and private club, and found about 100 documents with classified markings out of thousands searched.

“When Mar-a-Lago was raided, I went on TV… and I said ‘Look, this has been rumored to have been a problem with many former presidents about inadvertently taking documents,’” Comer said.

Biden family probe

However, Comer repeatedly said his committee will be taking aim at Biden — not solely over classified documents, but over whether the president benefited from his Yale-educated lawyer son Hunter’s business dealings with foreign powers.

Hunter Biden once sat on the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma and became connected with a Chinese energy tycoon who was later reportedly detained as part of an anti-corruption investigation.

“We’re investigating the president — this isn’t a Hunter Biden investigation, he’s a person of interest in the investigation of Joe Biden,” Comer said.

The White House has characterized the investigation as a conspiracy theory.

COVID origins

Another issue that Comer said he hopes will be bipartisan: the origins of the COVID-19 virus.

A select committee to examine the topic will be housed under the Committee on Oversight and Accountability.

“No Republicans are accusing Democrats of starting COVID-19. We’re wondering if COVID-19 started in the Wuhan (China) lab, so no one said ‘Oh, that was started by a Democrat.’ But for whatever reason there were never any bipartisan hearings on the origination of COVID,” Comer said. “… It should be bipartisan. Hopefully this won’t be a select committee like (the) January 6th (select committee), which was considered overtly partisan.”

A March 2021 report by the World Health Organization found that it was “likely to very likely” that an animal host carried the virus and transmitted it to humans, but a source was not definitively identified. The United States and several other countries expressed concern about delays and access to data used in the report.

For all of its wide-ranging examinations, there are two topics the Oversight Committee won’t be raising: the 2020 election results and police reform.

“At the end of the day, we’ve got our plate full with excessive spending and public corruption,” Comer said.

In light of this month’s brutal beating and death of Tyre Nichols by Memphis police, Comer said any discussion of police reform remains under the Judiciary Committee.

“We don’t want to reach into other committees’ areas of jurisdiction,” Comer said. “… Certainly there are bad apples in every profession, bad politicians, bad police officers, and they need to be held accountable.” 

The Committee on Oversight and Accountability will hold its first full committee organization meeting at 11 a.m. Tuesday.