Sen. John Curtis, a Republican from Utah, decided this week to swing for the fences. He proposed that Congress investigate the business dealings of presidential families, both sides, and called on Hunter Biden and Donald Trump Jr. to testify. It was the kind of performative bipartisanship that usually dies in a committee room before anyone has to sweat under the lights.
Except Hunter Biden said yes.
“I’ll sit next to Don Jr. and testify any time, any place,” Biden said Tuesday, publicly accepting Curtis’s challenge. He noted he has already given hours of testimony and has nothing to hide. Which is more than can be said for the Trump organization’s favorite son, whose business career has been a parade of foreign entanglements that would make a congressional ethics lawyer reach for the antacids.
This is the part where the Republican Party’s bluff gets called in the most public way possible. For years, the GOP machinery has treated Hunter Biden’s business dealings as the scandal of the century. James Comer held hearings. Jim Jordan issued subpoenas. They demanded closed-door depositions, the kind where selective leaks can contort facts before the public ever sees a transcript. Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, called that play correctly in 2023 when he said closed sessions “can be selectively leaked and used to manipulate the facts.” He offered public testimony instead. Republicans balked. Rep. Jamie Raskin nailed it: “What the Republicans fear most is sunlight and the truth.”
Drew Anderson / PexelsThat dynamic has not changed. Curtis, to his limited credit, at least had the consistency to say the scrutiny should apply to Trump’s family too. But you can already feel the Republican caucus backing toward the exits. They want Hunter Biden in a room they control. They do not want Don Jr. anywhere near a microphone where someone might ask about the Trump Organization’s dealings in India, the Philippines, Turkey, or the $2 billion Saudi crown prince Jared Kushner scooped up the moment his father-in-law left office. They want a one-way mirror, not a two-way street.
The structural injustice here is not complicated. Congressional oversight should not be a weapon wielded against one family while the other gets a pass. If presidential relatives are cashing in on access, the public deserves answers from all of them. Hunter Biden has now twice offered to testify in the open. The response from the party that spent years screaming about accountability has been to insist on a private room first.
That tells you everything. Comer said Hunter Biden is “trying to play by his own rules instead of following the rules required of everyone else.” But the rule everyone else should have to follow is this: if you are investigating influence peddling, you investigate influence peddling. You do not pick the president’s son from one party and shield the president’s son from the other. That is not oversight. That is a political hit job dressed up in committee letterhead.
Hunter Biden just handed them the test. Show up. Sit down. Let the cameras roll. Put Don Jr. in the chair next to him and let the American people hear from both. If Republicans will not do that, then this was never about accountability. It was always about the next attack ad.
Hold them to it. Call your representatives. Demand public testimony from both families. Sunlight is not a partisan tool, and anyone afraid of it is hiding something.