There were plenty of fireworks on the House floor Wednesday during an Oversight and Accountability Committee hearing on the incident. Impeaching President Joe Biden. Hunter Biden’s former business partner Tony Bobulinski was one of the star witnesses at the hearing, and so was his BlackBerry.
More than an hour into the hearing, Bobulinski answered questions about his business affairs with Hunter Biden and text messages between him and another business partner, Rob Walker. Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., pointed out to committee Chairman James Comer that since all this discussion was about certain texts on Bobulinski’s BlackBerry, why didn’t the committee What about owning these texts?
“I’d like to know if we get all of these text messages, and I would move the committee to subpoena Mr. Bobulinski’s BlackBerry, which contains messages related to Hunter Biden and the controlling partners,” Raskin said. “He said he would be willing to provide it to the committee, so it should be simple.”
What followed was a clowning performance by Republicans on the committee, which is no surprise to Congress. After Raskin’s motion was seconded, Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, quickly moved to table the matter, a cunning way of taking no action. Rep. Cuomo agreed and called for a vote in which the yes (mostly Republican) votes were outweighed by Democrats and their no votes. Rep. Cuomo, however, wasn’t convinced, so he quickly agreed but asked for a recorded vote. That led to a quick adjournment of the session as Republicans scrambled to get more party members on board for the vote on whether they should subpoena text messages from BlackBerry phones with cracked screens.
Several Republican members of Congress traveled to the hearing during the brief recess to record their votes. After 10 minutes of fighting, the Republicans voted 21 in favor and the Democrats voted 16 against.
After the vote, Democratic Rep. Gerald Connolly of Virginia asked Bobulinski and his BlackBerry more questions. He asked Bobulinski if he would provide his cell phone to the committee.
“I’d love to sit in a room with the chairman and senior members, have my phone and their staff, and we can look at every text message,” Bobulinski said. He went on to say that he had a forensic expert try to download the data from his phone, but you know what, that expert couldn’t do it.
The hearings continued in the wake of the BlackBerry drama, with Republicans continuing to do their best to make the case that President Biden is the centerpiece of a crime family.However, the result is Weak links between president’s criminal business dealings with son and associatesand More scandals about Trump and his associates.