In the run-up to the 2024 election, the House GOP’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s “shady” business dealings was a centerpiece of their attacks on President Joe Biden.
As the House Oversight Committee website currently says, the investigation into the so-called “Biden crime family” and its “influence peddling scheme” probed “whether the Biden family has been targeted by foreign actors, President Biden is compromised, and our national security is threatened” due to his family and associates receiving $20 million from foreign entities.
The “main points of interest” specifically involved members of the family and associates allegedly accepting $3 million from Romania, $8 million from China — including a diamond given to Hunter Biden worth $80,000 — $6.5 million from Ukraine and $3.5 million from Russia.
The multiyear investigation culminated with the House Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees publishing a 300-page report in August that alleged “impeachable conduct” by the president, primarily relating to his ties to these foreign business dealings.
“President Biden will go down as the most corrupt president in U.S. history,” Oversight’s chair, Rep. James Comer, wrote in a January Fox News op-ed. “Our investigation will be remembered as one of the most successful ever conducted by Congress.”
(Biden was never charged with a crime, and a 2023 Washington Post fact-check found that “no evidence has emerged that any of these funds can be traced to Joe Biden himself.”)
But when President Donald Trump accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar as a gift to replace Air Force One without seeking congressional approval? Comer isn’t sweating it.
“Everything Trump has done has been transparent,” the Oversight chair told NOTUS.
Three days after ABC News first reported that Trump was poised to accept a “palace in the sky,” the head of the panel charged with holding the government officials accountable told NOTUS he didn’t “know much about it.”
“But I will find out,” he said.
Comer — who just authored a book titled “All the President’s Money: Investigating the Secret Foreign Schemes That Made the Biden Family Rich” — knew enough about the gift to tell NOTUS that it resembles nothing like the corrupt foreign dealings of the Biden administration. Trump’s public embrace of the plane, despite a price tag that’s 20-times higher than anything he’s accused the Biden family of accepting, looks nothing like the Biden family’s alleged cover-up scheme.
“If they had given Joe Biden a plane, he would have denied it and would have said I was lying,” Comer told NOTUS. “And you all would have attacked me for accusing him of getting the plane.”
Comer’s justification was one of several arguments NOTUS heard from House Republican leaders of the Biden impeachment inquiry condoning the gift from Qatar. Although a few Republicans have raised national security concerns since Trump’s declaration that “only a fool would not accept” the plane, most Republican lawmakers waved off any ethical issues and bristled at any comparison to the Biden investigation.
Republicans repeatedly told NOTUS that Trump’s acceptance of the plane is not just transparent, but an acceptable official act. They said it was not only good for the nation’s global clout, but also taxpayer wallets.
“Don’t heads of state get gifts given to them all the time by other heads of state?” asked Rep. Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee’s chair, suggesting that the White House has “probably got a whole room full of stuff.”
“And then, it’s not for personal use. It’s a gift to the United States,” he said.
“I don’t see a concern,” Jordan continued, “with the leader of our country accepting a gift from some other head of state or other country that’s with the benefit of the country.”
When NOTUS followed-up that it has been reported the plane will be transferred to Trump’s library foundation after his White House tenure, Jordan claimed he hadn’t “heard all that.” But he still offered a defense.
“It would be the library; it wouldn’t be to President Trump personally.”
Trump receiving the plane in his official capacity as president also distinguishes the gift from anything he’s alleged the Biden family has accepted.
“That was money going to Hunter Biden’s pocket,” Jordan said. “That’s nothing like with this.”
When NOTUS pointed out that Hunter Biden was also accused of accepting physical gifts, like the diamond, Jordan said the first son’s lack of a government title cast more suspicions on what he said were undisclosed gifts he took from foreign governments. As Jordan explained it, any gifts and funds given to Hunter Biden could not plausibly be for official use.
“Hunter Biden, he didn’t have any position in our government,” Jordan said. “Like, the comparison would be gifts given to President Obama or President Biden.”
As the Qatari plane news has forced House Republicans to reckon with uncomfortable ethical questions from reporters, they’ve tried to keep the media attention squarely on their efforts to advance a massive reconciliation package. Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters he preferred to leave questions to the administration, saying “it’s not my lane.”
(Article 1, Section 9, Clause 8 of the Constitution says that “no person holding any Office of Profit or Trust under them, shall, without the Consent of the Congress, accept of any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State.”)
Johnson, however, saw it within his lane to dispel any perceived similarities between the Biden investigation and the Qatari gift.
“The reason that many people refer to the Bidens as ‘the Biden crime family’ is because they were doing all this stuff behind curtains, but in the back rooms, they were trying to conceal it and they repeatedly lied about it and they set up shell companies, and the family was all engaged in getting all on the dole,” Johnson told reporters.
“Whatever President Trump is doing is out in the open,” he said. “They are not trying to conceal anything.”
It’s true that the Oversight Democrats who spent last Congress opposing the Biden impeachment investigation see the gift as a blatant display of corruption. But they say the gift raises questions about what financial transactions could be occurring outside of public view.
“That is about the least-transparent thing in the world,” former Oversight and current Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin told NOTUS. “In any event, even if it were all transparent, it makes no difference. I mean, somebody could rob a bank in broad daylight. It’s still robbing a bank, right?”
Raskin is now leading an investigation into Trump’s acceptance of the jet. He sent a letter Thursday to Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House counsel David Warrington accusing the administration of violating the emoluments clause, which requires presidents to receive congressional approval before accepting presents from foreign governments.
“This sets the stage for the most massive grift in American history,” Raskin told NOTUS. “I mean, admittedly, a $400 million airplane is up there, but we’re talking about billions of dollars that could be flowing through the bitcoin channels right now.”
Democratic lawmakers leaned into the Qatari plane story as an opportunity to call out Trump. Some of the feistiest members of the party, like Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Robert Garcia, upped their national profile last Congress by making a show of Comer’s inquiry. They’re now seizing on the gift to call out the similarities between the crimes Republicans accused the Biden family of committing.
“Can you imagine if Hunter Biden got a plane from the Chinese?” former Oversight Rep. Jared Moskowitz — a particularly accomplished gadfly to Comer — told NOTUS.
“They have no credibility anymore on anything they went after on ‘the Biden crime family,’ unless they go apply the same standard to this plane,” he said of Republicans.
But most Republicans expressed no need to apply any standard of scrutiny to the gift, let alone the degree of review they applied to the Biden investigation.
“Hunter Biden? Are you kidding?” Oversight member Rep. Byron Donalds scoffed at NOTUS.
“They hid from everybody,” he said. “They hid the money on purpose. They ran it through a bunch of innocuous, limited partnerships. They tried to protect the big guy even though we found the money trail. Hunter had no expertise whatsoever to sit on boards.”
“It’s not even the same topic,” Donalds continued.
When asked about the Qatari plane, another Oversight member, Rep. Nancy Mace, who memorably said last term that Hunter Biden had “no balls,” noted that Boeing assembles planes in her South Carolina district. (Trump complained that Boeing’s assembly of a new Air Force One was taking so long he needed to turn elsewhere for a jet fix.)
Still, Mace defended Trump.
“This was a very public thing,” Mace said. “I support the president, and he saved the taxpayers a lot of money.”
Republicans falling in line behind the president is hardly surprising; public fealty to Trump, even in his most controversial moments, is essentially the minimum buy-in to sit at the House GOP’s poker table. Comer told NOTUS last week — before the Qatar plane news broke — that he’s not worried about “anything the Trumps are doing business-wise” despite their foreign ventures that Democrats say present conflicts of interest.
But there were a few Republican lawmakers who told NOTUS they’re uncomfortable with the Qatari gift, citing security concerns, worries about the Qatari government’s ties to Hamas and the public perception that it might look like corruption — even if it’s not.
“I want the president to have the big, beautiful Air Force One,” Rep. Eric Burlison, another Oversight Committee member, told NOTUS. “I just think we ought to pay for it.”
Although he was queasy about the gift, Burlison described the alleged Biden crimes as “totally different” because the plane will have an official use that benefits the American public. To make his point, he gave NOTUS an example.
“Missouri State University presented me with a football helmet,” Burlison said. “That’s awesome, but it’s not mine, right? It belongs to the office. And I think that, in the same regard, that’s the way that we elected officials should view any kind of gifts, including a plane.”
When NOTUS asked Burlison if his perspective changes, knowing that the plane will reportedly transfer to Trump’s library foundation where he can continue to use it personally, the congressman said he didn’t know about that.
“Would I accept?” he said. “No, but I’m probably not the normal, right?”
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Riley Rogerson is a reporter at NOTUS.