(NewsNation) — The House Oversight Committee has issued a resolution holding Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a Congressional subpoena.
House Republicans wanted Biden to appear for a private deposition before committee members, which he refused to do while saying he would testify in a public questioning.
The resolution is to be sent to a U.S. attorney to hold Biden legally accountable for failing to appear if passed.
The resolution has to go through markups in committee before being sent to the House floor for a full vote. The committee’s ranking Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., has spoken out against efforts to hold Biden in contempt given his offer to testify in public.
House Republicans have launched investigations into several Biden family members but have focused on Hunter Biden in particular, looking into the president’s son’s business dealings and the handling of his legal troubles.
On the day Biden was set to appear before members of the oversight and judiciary committees, he gave a press conference instead, reiterating his intention to be questioned in a public setting.
House Republicans say the format of a closed-door deposition is different from public testimony, where members rotate through rounds of questioning and are demanding Biden comply.
Biden has objected on the grounds that members would selectively leak information from the deposition to create a specific narrative around his testimony.
The investigations into Hunter Biden are part of a larger effort by House Republicans to prove that President Joe Biden engaged in misconduct.