At a hearing Wednesday where witnesses discussed Russian atrocities in Ukraine — including using rape as a weapon of war and indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets — a GOP congressman used the time to ask President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.
The question so angered one of his fellow Democrats on the House Foreign Affairs Committee that he took time to say he was “shocked and disgusted” by it.
“It’s bad. It’s disrespectful. It’s not about Hunter Biden,” Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) said in response to Pennsylvania Rep. Scott Perry’s remark.
“It is about Vladimir Putin. It is about genocide. It is about depravity. And these are war crimes. That’s why we’re here.”
Perry is the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, a group of conservatives and libertarians within the House Republican conference that prides itself on pushing the Republican Party further to the right.
At the hearing, Andriy Kostin, Ukraine’s attorney general, said the country was investigating some 80,000 allegations of war crimes, including the abduction of some 20,000 Ukrainian children who were taken to Russia. He called for US financial and logistical support for the prosecution’s efforts.
Some House Republicans, particularly in the Perry caucus, have been skeptical of US support for Ukraine. The Republican presidential front-runner, former President Donald Trump, believed he would allow Russia to keep some of Ukraine’s land in exchange for an end to the war, a position Ukrainians overwhelmingly oppose.
via the Associated Press
Perry’s question, which seemed to catch Kostin off guard, came the same day another Republican, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), also called out Biden in an unrelated hearing — and yet another high-profile Republican interrupts an immigration hearing. .
“The president’s family will wish they had thought of Switzerland,” Comer said at an oversight committee hearing on the withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan last year, referring to Switzerland’s notorious reputation for banking secrecy.
Meanwhile, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Ga.) was reprimanded at a national security hearing for calling Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “a liar,” violating the decorum that should be accorded to the witnesses.
Perry began his bribery by listing incidents of alleged Ukrainian corruption dating back to 2011, then said an investigation into the Burisma gas company had been halted because the chief executive could not be found.
“But we can probably identify Hunter Biden,” he said, a reference to the younger Biden’s work for the company.
“What is your office’s position that Burisma needs further investigation,” Perry asked Kostin, “and will you commit to investigating Burisma to the fullest extent, regardless of the rebuttal you receive and regardless of who you call as a witness, including Americans who may be involved in the corruption, abuse, waste and theft of taxpayers’ money in your country?”
After what up to that point had been an otherwise sympathetic hearing that lasted about two hours, Kostin, the Ukrainian prosecutor, took about 10 seconds to finally answer Perry’s question. He did it slowly with his arms crossed.
“Deputy, you started with facts and facts. I will add a date and a fact: March 2023,” Kostin said.
Then the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption said Ukraine had made enough progress to be removed from its blacklist of nations with serious corruption problems. Kostin added that a new director of a national anti-corruption office was also appointed.
“Regarding the case that you mentioned, unfortunately, it’s not the subject of our committee’s hearing, so I’m not at liberty to give you more information about that case at this time,” Kostin said.
The next questioner, Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), took a jab at Perry, who had already vacated her seat on the committee dais by then.
“I think you’ve been the subject of a tirade from someone who has never heard testimony before, which is a shame,” she told Kostin.
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