Report: White House Unwilling to Commit to Biden’s Cooperation With House Impeachment Probe

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre refused to speculate on Wednesday on whether President Joe Biden would give full cooperation to the House as it undetakes an impeachment inquiry.

According to reports, including from Breitbart News, a reporter posed the quesation to her, asking if Biden intended to cooperate with an inquiry into alleged “abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption.”

Jeane-Pierre’s answer offered no clear sense of Biden’s stance on the issue. As Breitbart reported, she said this: “I’mcertainly not going to speculate on what has been a baseless inquiry that the House Republicans can’t even really defend themselves,” Jean-Pierre replied.

“I’m going to refer to my White House counsel on any specifics,” she added, as per the outlet’s report on Wednesday evening.

She also demurred on a question about how Biden had reacted to news of the probe.

Later she added this in response to another question from the media: “What you see Republicans in Congress, right,  they have spent all year investigating the president. That’s what they’ve spent all year doing and have turned up with no evidence. None.”

But House leadership has taken a different view as it has looked into business dealings by Biden’s son Hunter and the president’s own links to such things as alleged influence peddling.

Biden has been accused of helping Hunter to exchange access to the White House for lucrative foreign business deals. This, while Biden was Barack Obama’s vice president.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy opted to open an inquiry without a formal House vote, and even as Republican senators have raised concern that there has not yet been a showing of sufficient evidence to proceed toward impeachment.

Beyond Biden’s alleged roles in the family business — evidence of Biden’t participation in Hunter’s calls with foreign entities has been presented — some lawmakers have voiced concern that the president offered special treatmenty to Hunter amid a Justice Department tax probe.

Meanwhile, the White House on Wednesday issued “guidance” to the mainstream media on the new inquiry. It has sent a letter to top news executives and urged them to intensify scrutiny of House Republicans.

Ian Sams, spokesperson for the White House impeachment war room, wrote a letter to be sent to news organizations such as The New York Times, Fox News, the Associated Press, CBS News and others, CNN first reported.

“It’s time for the media to ramp up its scrutiny of House Republicans for opening an impeachment inquiry based on lies,” Sams wrote, according to the letter.