A top GOP senator has scrapped plans to vote to subpoena a former Democratic public relations consultant as part of an investigation into Hunter Biden over his role on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) announced Wednesday that he was canceling the vote amid concerns about discrepancies in the evidence and allegations of political bias in the probe.
“We will continue to iron out the discrepancies that were raised over the last couple days, and I can’t really get into much more than that,” Johnson told reporters after announcing the cancelation.
When pressed about what kind of discrepancies, Johnson elaborated.
“There were issues raised. There were discrepancies in what had been told in one briefing versus the next briefing, and then even greater discrepancies in staff notes.”
The Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee was set to vote Wednesday on issuing a subpoena to Andriy Telizhenko, an ex-Ukrainian Embassy official who worked as a consultant for Blue Star Strategies during the time Hunter Biden served on the board of Burisma.
Burisma was represented by Blue Star Strategies for consultancy work.
Prior to the scheduled vote, Democrats and even some Republicans had urged caution before moving forward, citing fears that the investigation could aid efforts by Russians to spread disinformation and act as a smear campaign for a leading Democratic presidential candidate, Joe Biden.
Now, Johnson says, the committee will instead vote to subpoena Blue Star Strategies directly, a move he says he will help eliminate some of the voiced concerns.
Hunter has previously stated that while he regrets joining the board because it exhibited “poor judgment,” he stood by the assertion that he had done nothing improper.
“Did I do anything improper? No, not in any way. Not in any way whatsoever,” he said during an interview with ABC News in October.
Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates denounced Johnson’s probe in a statement to The Post.
“It is alarming and deeply troubling that Senator Johnson is diverting the attention and taxpayer-funded resources of the Senate Homeland Security Committee away from the coronavirus outbreak, which was just designated a global pandemic, to clutch at a conspiracy theory that every fact-checker has debunked.
“In fact, Senator Johnson himself, joined by other Republicans, endorsed Joe Biden’s work to get this corrupt prosecutor fired and signed a letter supporting that effort in 2015. He has as much credibility on this issue as Bernie Madoff did on pension funds.”
