Hunter Biden lawyer Kevin Morris said Republicans misrepresented his own testimony with ‘elementary school quality’

By Paula Reid and Annie Grayer, CNN

Hunter Biden’s lawyer Kevin Morris is going after House Republicans for what he described as misrepresenting his closed-door interview with committee investigators and demanding they release the full transcript to correct the record.

Republicans have raised questions about why Morris lent the president’s son millions of dollars and have sought to connect him to their impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden. While Morris explained the terms of the loans, according to his opening statement provided to CNN, House Oversight Chairman James Comer put out a statement following the interview, digging in on the allegations.

“Here’s what they do: They bring up something totally innocuous and legal, get nowhere with it, and they run to the cameras and make spooky noises. What they do has an elementary school quality to it” Morris said in a statement shared first with CNN following Comer’s framing of the interview.

Throughout his panel’s investigation into the Biden family, Comer has promised to be transparent and release the transcripts of witness interviews. Prior to Morris’ interview, his panel had only released two out of the eight interview transcripts it has conducted as part of its investigation into the Biden family.

After the interview with Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Comer claimed in a statement that Morris’ loans to the president’s son “raises ethical and campaign finance concerns for President Joe Biden” and was done in 2019 to “insulate then-presidential candidate Joe Biden from political liability.” The GOP committee chairman even put the term loan in quotes because he said the millions of dollars could “ultimately be forgiven.”

Comer went as far as to say that Morris’ financial relationship with the president’s son has given him “access” to the White House in his statement following the interview.

This set off a firestorm from Morris and his team.

“My ‘access’ to the White House consisted of a tour, attending a wedding, and the especially heinous crime of attending last year’s Fourth of July picnic with hundreds of other people,” Morris said in his statement to CNN.

An attorney representing Morris separately accused Comer of putting out a statement “with cherry‐picked, out of context and totally misleading descriptions of what Mr. Morris said,” according to a copy of the letter provided to CNN.

“We do not have to have this dueling rendition of what Mr. Morris actually said. Just release the full transcript. Why would you be reluctant or afraid to do that, other than it will disprove your spin? Let the public see the truth,” Morris’ lawyer Bryan M. Sullivan wrote to Comer.

A spokesperson for the House Oversight Committee responded to the letter from Kevin Morris’ attorney and defended Comer’s statement.

“The transcript will affirm Chairman Comer’s readout of the interview with Kevin Morris. The Committee intends to release the transcript soon but we do not have it from the court reporter at this time,” the spokesperson told CNN.

Morris claimed House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith “misstated the dates of tax payments to gin up a Campaign Finance issue when they were made in 2021” and said the Missouri Republican congressman accused him of blocking mergers of public companies.

“It’s embarrassing and I think they know it,” Morris said.

CNN has reached out to Smith for comment.

While the interview was ongoing, both Democratic and Republican lawmakers who attended the interview spoke to press.

Comer claimed that Morris “wasn’t exactly clear” about the terms of the loans he took on for the president’s son. The Kentucky Republican also alleged that the president’s son does not have the means to pay Morris back by 2025, when the loan balance is due.

“If you loan someone $6 million and it’s all one payment due four years in advance and the borrower doesn’t have a job, doesn’t have any income, doesn’t have any assets – is he going to pay it back? No, it’s not humanly possible,” Comer said.

In his opening statement obtained by CNN, Morris said, “I have loaned Hunter money to help him through his difficulties. When needed, we each have had attorneys separately advise us on these transactions. I am confident Hunter will repay these loans.”

When asked how this interview relates to the impeachment inquiry into the president, Comer argued that Hunter Biden’s tax problems with the federal government was a political problem for then presidential candidate Joe Biden and framed Morris, who is a Democratic donor, as the one who stepped up to help the situation.

“I think today what we learned is Joe Biden had a problem with his son. Kevin Morris entered the scene and started paying his bills to keep him from going to prison, to keep him from being a story on the front page of all of the newspapers prior to the presidential election and then, paying his bills to make sure that the president’s son doesn’t get hauled off to jail for failure to pay taxes,” Comer told reporters.

Morris, who discussed his close relationship with the president’s son also said in his opening statement, “I did not and do not have any expectations of receiving anything from Hunter’s father or the Biden administration in exchange for helping Hunter, nor have I asked for anything from President Biden or his administration.”

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin emerged from the ongoing closed door interview with Kevin Morris and criticized Republicans for going on a “wild goose chase” by trying to turn the personal relationship between the president’s son and Morris “into something suspect.”

“For the life of me I cannot figure out what we are doing here” Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, told reporters about the ongoing interview. “This lawyer has nothing to do with any foreign government or any foreign state. He’s not working for the US government. He’s not channeling foreign funds, which is what I thought all of this was about.”

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