One of Hunter Biden’s most ardent defenders in Congress is moving to investigate former President Donald Trump’s courting of prospective donors.
Democratic Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin has routinely derided congressional efforts to investigate Hunter Biden’s business affairs and whether President Joe Biden may have been involved in those dealings. Now, he is requesting that nine oil executives who attended a recent meeting with Trump to hand over any relevant information that may pertain to a “quid-pro-quo” arrangement wherein the executives give Trump campaign cash in exchange for more favorable energy policy should he return to the Oval Office.
“I write to request any information you may have about quid pro quo financial agreements related to U.S. energy policy that were reportedly proposed at a recent campaign fundraising dinner with ex-President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club that you appear to have attended,” Raskin wrote in Tuesday letters to the nine executives. “Media reports raise significant potential ethical, campaign finance, and legal issues that would flow from the effective sale of American energy and regulatory policy to commercial interests in return for large campaign contributions.”
“Mr. Trump’s unvarnished quid pro quo offer is especially troubling evidence in light of recent accounts that the ‘U.S. oil industry is drawing up ready-to-sign executive orders for Donald Trump aimed at pushing natural gas exports, cutting drilling costs and increasing offshore oil leases in case he wins a second term,’” Raskin added in the letters to the executives. “These preparatory actions suggest that certain oil and gas companies, which have a track record of using deceitful tactics to undermine effective climate policy may have already accepted or facilitated Mr. Trump’s explicit corrupt bargain.”
The report Raskin references is from The Washington Post, which broke the story on Thursday.
Trump tried to convince oil executives to contribute significantly to his reelection campaign, describing $1 billion worth of donations as a small price to pay relative to the savings the executives will realize in his potential second term thanks to his more pro-fossil fuel stance, relative to the often anti-fossil fuel policies of the Biden administration, the Post reported. Much of what he reportedly said he would do to benefit energy companies revolves around rolling back aspects of the Biden administration’s climate agenda.
Democrats have generally painted the Mar-a-Lago meeting as scandalous, but others have asserted that the meeting was standard practice for high-profile political figures seeking donations in an effort to win a major election. Notably, the Post’s report did not indicate that Trump did not promise the assembled executives any policies that he had not pursued or enacted during his first term in office.
Raskin, meanwhile, has routinely suggested that the Republican impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden regarding his potential involvement in his son’s affairs is baseless and dishonest. Along with Democratic New York Rep. Dan Goldman, Raskin also got testy with Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter Biden associate who has alleged for years that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business affairs, while Bobulinski sat for a closed-door interview with Congressional investigators in February.
Hunter Biden and his associates raked in millions of dollars around the world during the 2010s, including the period when his father was vice president, with considerable sums of money flowing through a complex network of shell companies before being deposited in bank accounts controlled by members of the Biden family, according to the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Representatives for Raskin did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
