The House Oversight and Judiciary committees are expected to hear testimony from another Biden family business associate Thursday.
Joey Langston is expected to appear before the committees Thursday morning on Capitol Hill for a closed-door, transcribed interview.
Langston is said to have hosted fundraisers for Joe Biden and donated thousands to his political campaigns.
The House Oversight Committee says Langston pleaded guilty in 2008 to participating in a conspiracy to attempt to influence a judge by providing the judge with ‘favorable consideration’ for a federal judgeship. Langston was sentenced to three years in federal prison and fined $250,000.
The Mississippi state bar then disbarred him from practicing law. And, in 2016, a federal judge denied his requests to have his ‘conviction for conspiring to bribe a judge thrown out’ and to have his ‘record cleared.’
But the House Oversight Committee says it obtained bank records revealing that after Langston lost his appeal, his company, Langston Law Firm Consulting Inc., began making payments, totaling more than $200,000, to James and Sara Biden directly, and to their entity, Lion Hall Group.
The committee says it is ‘interested in the nature and purpose of these payments, which totaled $187,000 while Joe Biden was serving as vice president.’
House Republicans hope the witnesses can provide information on whether, among other things, Joe Biden, as vice president and/or president, ‘took any official action or effected any change in government policy because of money or other things of value provided to himself or his family, including whether concerns that Chinese sources may release additional evidence about their business relationships with the Biden family have had any impact on official acts performed by President Biden or U.S. foreign policy; abused his office of public trust by providing foreign interests with access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him; or abused his office of public trust by knowingly participating in a scheme to enrich himself or his family by giving foreign interests the impression that they would receive access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him.’
Langston’s testimony comes after Hunter Biden business associates like Eric Schwerin, Rob Walker and Mervyn Yan all appeared for their own transcribed interviews before the committee. Their testimony was sought by House Republicans as part of the House impeachment inquiry against President Biden.
So far, Yan, Walker and Schwerin have testified that they were not aware of any involvement President Biden had in his son’s business dealings.
Langston’s expected testimony comes ahead of a deposition of President Biden’s brother, James Biden’s, which is scheduled for Feb. 21. The committees subpoenaed Biden last year.
Hunter Biden defied his subpoena to appear for a deposition Dec. 13 and was at risk of being held in contempt of Congress.
His attorneys and the committees came to an agreement earlier this month that the first son will appear for a closed-door deposition Feb. 28.