All that whinging from the GOP about Hunter Biden and his supposed influence peddling across the world may actually lead to a piece of legislation with a real shot of making it into law, as surprising as that may be.
Lawmakers in the US House of Representatives are considering legislation, according to Axios, which would put new rules in place dictating which family members of elected officials will be required to submit financial disclosure forms, opening up a window into the previously opaque wall that protected family members of DC’s elite from scrutiny.
The legislation has another purpose as well: To deal with the evolving row over classified documents that began with a shocking FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago and has since consumed both Joe Biden and former Vice President Mike Pence as well.
It would streamline and reform the process by which presidential records are turned over to the National Archives following the end of a president’s term in office; the bill is meant to put safeguards in place to prevent the further (allegedly) accidental retention of classified materials by former elected officials.
What the bill would not do, however, is address the issue of “overclassification”, or overly broad classification of federal government documents and records, which has been raised as a concern by many in the wake of the documents scandal.
It’s unclear whether the processes that comes into play in the legislation being pursued by James Comer, head of the House Oversight Committee, and his ranking Democratic colleague Jamie Raskin would have prevented Donald Trump from retaining classified materials and other presidential records at his Mar-a-Lago abode, given that it is known that unlike Mr Pence and Mr Biden, he resisted attempts by the National Archives to recover the materials once they were discovered.
Still, it’s a sign that Democrats and Republicans will be able to work together on some isolated issues even as the lower chamber is now governed by a GOP majority which is likely to be a graveyard for much legislation sponsored by either side.
Republican members of Congress have vowed investigations into Hunter Biden and the president’s finances, even as the younger Mr Biden has not yet been credibly accused of committing any wrongdoing.
A previous hearing touted by the GOP as an opportunity for them to hold big tech CEOs accountable for the supposed censorship of conservative views on their platforms ended up being a disaster, with Republicans eliciting no confessions from their witnesses and instead simply taking turns angrily harranguing their guests (to subsequent denials).
