Hunter Biden probes put GOP under some pressure

House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said recently that his committee’s investigations into Hunter Biden and his business transactions are just “beginning” as he seeks to create a headache for the White House while President Biden prepares to launch his reelection campaign.

Comer and his committee are trying to unveil whether Biden’s son’s business dealings abroad were connected to the president himself.

Other investigations have shown no involvement by the president, but Comer insists his committee’s inquiries into the family’s dealings will prove to be a fruitful effort.

“We know that when the president was vice president in the Obama administration, he made several trips to China. He brought his son and some of these associates with him,” Comer said during a recent appearance on Fox News, one of a dozen interviews he’s conducted in recent weeks to talk about the probe.

“They met in different places with some of these people that the president claimed he never met with. So we know the president hasn’t been truthful about his involvement when he was vice president,” he said.

The Oversight Committee clinched a long-sought win recently when it announced that the Treasury Department had granted the panel access to financial transaction reports pertaining to companies affiliated with the Biden family or their associates, which GOP lawmakers had been pushing for.

White House allies see the committee’s efforts as a political stunt, with the aim of weakening Biden ahead of his reelection bid.

It isn’t that the Biden White House isn’t taking the probe seriously, allies maintain. In recent months, the president has built a team of nearly two dozen lawyers along with communications and legislative aides to manage House GOP investigations and other inquiries.

But Biden allies are betting that the Republican efforts will be for naught, pointing to polling that has indicated the American public doesn’t care about the president’s son and his business dealings.

An NBC News poll in January showed that 55 percent of Americans — including a majority of independents — said they believe Republicans will spend “too much time investigating President Joe Biden and not enough time on other priorities.”

The same poll revealed that 63 percent of those surveyed say they had little to no confidence that Congress will conduct a fair and impartial investigation into Biden and his administration.

A Pew Research Center poll out that same month showed that 65 percent, including 4 in 10 Republicans, are concerned that Republican lawmakers will focus too much on Biden administration investigations.

Democrats say the investigations will cost Republicans politically.