A Republican effort to subpoena records about Joe Biden and his son Hunter could be derailed amid concerns from at least one GOP senator that the push appears politically motivated.

The Senate Homeland Security Committee is set to vote next Wednesday on a subpoena for records from a Democratic public relations firm related to the panel’s investigation of conflict-of-interest allegations against the Bidens.

But Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), a member of the panel, has hinted that he could vote against issuing the subpoena, noting the committee’s investigation might look political in nature given Biden’s resurgence and the increasing likelihood that he’ll become the Democratic presidential nominee.

“There’s no question the appearance is not good,” Romney told reporters, adding that he is still “considering” his vote.

Republicans hold a slim 8-6 majority, and if just one GOP senator joins all Democrats, it would mean a 7-7 tie that would result in a failure to issue the subpoena.

Romney’s concerns appeared to be heightened on Thursday after President Donald Trump declared in a Fox News interview Wednesday night that he would seek to use the issue against Biden if he secures the Democratic nomination.

Romney suggested Thursday that the panel shouldn’t even be looking into the issue.

“I would prefer that investigations are done by an independent, nonpolitical body,” said Romney, who split with his party when he voted to convict Trump in the impeachment trial.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), the committee’s chairman, declined to comment on Romney’s views but said he sees “no reason why anybody would object” to the subpoena, which seeks documents from Blue Star, a Democratic public affairs firm, about Hunter Biden’s role on the board of a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma. It would be the first subpoena as part of the committee’s probe.

Johnson’s Democratic counterpart, Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, has opposed the committee’s investigation and the subpoena.

Peters has raised concerns about the veracity of the information the committee receives — in particular, whether it’s part of a Russia disinformation campaign. Several Republicans — including Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) — have expressed similar worries both in private and in public.

“Quite frankly, the Homeland Security Committee should be focusing on issues related to homeland security,” Peters said. When asked about whether he thinks he can defeat the subpoena effort, he said: “I think it’s uncertain. I don’t know how it’s going to go right now.”

Peters said he hasn’t yet talked about the subpoena with Romney, but said he was likely to speak directly with him before Wednesday’s vote in an effort to sway him.

Another potential swing vote, Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio), said he, too, remains undecided and was unable to review the documents as of Thursday morning because he was chairing a hearing.

“I want to be supportive of Chairman Johnson and be sure that we’re getting the right information. It should be objective information, and let the American people decide,” said Portman, who voted to acquit Trump in the impeachment trial but was critical of his conduct.

Asked about Trump’s comments about the Burisma issue, Portman said: “That doesn’t surprise me.”

A source familiar with the matter, though, said Portman is leaning toward supporting the subpoena. Johnson has told colleagues that his effort is aimed simply at gathering information.

Marianne LeVine and Martin Matishak contributed to this report.

A bespectacled Ukrainian oligarch with a strongman reputation popped up over and over throughout the Donald Trump impeachment saga. And now, little-noticed filings in Delaware Chancery Court allege a closer relationship than previously known between that oligarch, Ihor Kolomoisky, and a South Florida businessman who donated to a member of Congress. It’s another example of how people and companies linked to some of the former Soviet Union’s most controversial oligarchs end up with connections to Capitol Hill. In Kolomoisky’s case, this is far from the first congressional link. In 2017, Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS) secured a room in the basement of the Capitol Building for a fake congressional hearing. The focus of that hearing: lambasting a former Ukrainian official who seized control of PrivatBank, a bank Kolomoisky had previously owned. And now a lawsuit filed in Delaware last spring alleges that a South Florida businessman named Uriel Laber played a key role in an alleged scheme by Kolomoisky to steal billions from that bank. (Laber strongly denies the allegations.) In 2017 and 2018, Laber gave a total of $2,500 to then-candidate Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, now a Democratic member of Congress who flipped a Florida seat previously held by Republicans. Mucarsel-Powell sits on the House Judiciary Committee, which helped helm impeachment proceedings targeting President Donald Trump over his pressure campaign against the Ukrainian government. Mucarsel-Powell’s husband previously worked for firms linked to Kolomoisky, as The Daily Beast first reported. “The Miami Herald long ago debunked far-fetched theories involving Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell,” said her spokesperson in a statement. “Moreover, one of the first things Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell did in Congress is fight for a bill to protect our government from foreign influence.”The oligarch, who has not been charged with a crime in the U.S. or Ukraine, has allies in high places. His TV channel aired the show that propelled Ukraine’s now-president, Volodymyr Zelensky, to fame. And one of Kolomoisky’s former lawyers, Andriy Bohdan, was the president’s chief of staff until last month. Rudy Giuliani—who was at the center of Trump’s efforts to pressure Zelensky to announce an investigation of former Vice President Joe Biden—telegraphed to Ukrainian officials that he wanted Bohdan out. However, a lawyer for ex-Giuliani associate Lev Parnas told The Daily Beast that Trump’s personal lawyer also delivered a letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) calling for sanctions on a host of Kolomoisky’s Ukrainian foes. On the list: the former regulator who was also the target of the Capitol basement fake hearing. Given Biden’s newfound frontrunner status in the Democratic presidential primary, the Ukraine story is finding its way back into the center of American politics after a brief post-impeachment respite. Senate Republicans, helmed by Chairman Ron Johnson of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, are ramping up their probe into the work Biden’s son did for a Ukrainian energy company controlled by a different allegedly corrupt oligarch. Laber, according to allegations in the lawsuit, has a peripheral connection to the long and sprawling saga of PrivatBank. According to the litigation—from a bank now controlled by the Ukrainian government—he played a meaningful role in Kolomoisky’s alleged scheme to seize billions from PrivatBank.Laber’s attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the suit last year. And a spokesperson for Laber strongly denied the allegations in a statement to The Daily Beast. > The allegations contained in the May 21 Delaware Chancery Court lawsuit are not only 100% false and defamatory, but they are outlandish. Unfortunately, people can make whatever allegations they want about someone else even when they are not true. This lawsuit is a perfect case in point. Messrs. Laber and Korf are outraged that the hard-earned reputation they have earned over the last 20 years as honest businessmen can be threatened by a lawsuit that is nothing more than a fictional orchestrated political attack on an investor in our businesses. They plan to fight the allegations vigorously and fully expect to be fully cleared of these allegations. With respect to the donations you referenced, Mr. Laber’s recollection is that he made a personal donation of $500 in 2017 and $2000 in 2018 to Rep. Debbie Mucarsel-Powell. Debbie Powell’s husband was hired by the company of which Messrs. Laber and Korf were owners more than ten years prior to her decision to run for Congress. Mr. Powell stopped working for the company in 2017, of which Messrs. Laber and Korf were owners. Mr. Kolomoiskys company is a shareholder of the company where Mr. Powell used to work. He is not the owner. Mr. Powell did not work for Mr. Kolomoisky; Mr. Kolomoisky has no involvement in any hires or HR decisions.> > Mr. Laber does not work for Mr. Kolomoisky and has never worked for Mr. Kolomoisky. Mr. Laber has had a very successful business career entirely separate from Kolomoisky and significant sources of his assets and earnings are entirely separate from Mr. Kolomoisky.The allegations themselves, leveled against Kolomoisky, Laber, and a number of other people, are eyebrow-raising. The plaintiffs claim “hundreds of millions of dollars in damages” from unjust enrichment, fraudulent transfer of funds, and violation of Ohio’s RICO statute (legislation designed to fight organized crime). Laber and other defendants, the suit alleges, used millions of ill-gotten dollars to buy Miami real estate. Laber and other defendants acted as “trusted lieutenants… in the United States and abroad” for Kolomoisky and his business partners, the suit alleges.Kolomoisky has spent years trying to regain control of the bank. And in his time in public life, he’s gained a reputation of using hardball tactics to get what he wants. The lawsuit said that in one case, Kolomoisky and his business partner “are alleged to have employed an ‘army of thugs’ to descend upon a competitor’s plant with baseball bats, gas, rubber pistols, iron bars, and chainsaws.” Kolomoisky was governor of a province in Eastern Ukraine when Russian-backed separatists started a war there. He used his billions to fund a private army that took on those forces. His militarism has also frightened many of his critics. And while The Wall Street Journal dubbed him “Ukraine’s secret weapon” because of that fight, years later he took a much more Kremlin-friendly stance. In an interview with The New York Times in the middle of the impeachment process, he called for Ukraine to seek better relations with Russia, even at the expense of its standing with Western powers. “They’re stronger anyway,” he said of the Kremlin. Read more at The Daily Beast.Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast hereGet our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

A day after former Vice President Joe Biden scored a series of dramatic primary victories on Super Tuesday to become the Democratic presidential frontrunner, President Donald Trump said the quiet part out loud during an interview with sycophantic Fox News host Sean Hannity: He’s going to make Biden’s son a central part of his campaign against the ex-veep.Appearing on Hannity’s primetime show Wednesday night for another rambling friendly phone chat, the president first made sure to praise the Fox host—who’s been described as the White House shadow chief of staff—and other network personalities who’ve shown him sufficient loyalty and obsequiousness. After getting that out of the way, Trump was asked about Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) suddenly announcing on Wednesday that he’ll be ramping up the Senate Homeland Security Committee’s investigation into Hunter Biden and his employment with Ukrainian gas company Burisma. Johnson said an interim report would be released within a couple of months.Fox Host Praises ‘Classic’ Trump’s ‘Legitimate’ Call for China to Dig Up Dirt on Biden“It has to be a campaign issue,” Hannity said. “How do you plan to use it or do you plan to use it?”Trump, just weeks after his Senate impeachment acquittal over charges that he withheld military aid in order to pressure Ukraine to announce an investigation of a domestic political rival, replied that he would absolutely make Biden’s son a major campaign issue.Complaining that Democrats in the primary didn’t use the Ukraine scandal against Biden early in the primary, the president asserted that “wouldn’t happen with the Republicans, I can tell you.”“That will be a major issue in the campaign,” Trump added. “I will bring that up all the time because I don’t see any way out for them. I don’t see how they can answer those questions. I hope they can, I’d actually prefer it that they can’t but I don’t believe they will be able to answer those questions. That was purely corrupt.”During Johnson’s announcement of the new phase of his investigation, he told reporters that “these are questions that Joe Biden has not adequately answered” and he’d “want these questions satisfactorily answered” if he were a Democratic primary voter.Kellyanne Conway, meanwhile, initially dodged the question on Fox News earlier in the night, telling Martha MacCallum, “Well, we don’t run investigations here out of the White House like that, the Congress does,” before going on to preview the campaign's attacks on Hunter Biden.Fox News Host Grills Kellyanne Conway: Is Trump Scared of Biden?Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

Joe Biden’s recent surge in the Democratic primary has revived his White House hopes and, with them, the Senate GOP’s interest in using their power to dig into his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine.The desire for dirt on the Bidens was what prompted House Democrats to impeach President Donald Trump, after it was revealed he was leveraging military aid to Ukraine as part of his efforts. But as Biden seemed to fade from contention during the early voting contests, interest in Hunter Biden’s time on the board of a Ukrainian energy company called Burisma seemed to fade among Trump and Republicans too. That’s now changed. On the heels of Biden’s string of primary wins on Tuesday, GOP lawmakers are teeing up letters and subpoenas for new information on the Bidens. And they’re offering up a fresh explanation for why the push is justified: they’re just vetting the guy for the benefit of Democratic primary voters.“If he is in fact the frontrunner for the Democratic nominee to be president of the United States,” said Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), “all the more reason to get to the bottom of it, and make sure that the people have all the information that they need to make an informed decision on the person that would be president of the United States.”The de facto leader of the Biden investigations, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), told reporters on Wednesday that Biden has not “adequately answered” questions about his family’s involvement in Ukraine, despite no actual evidence of wrongdoing on the part of the former VP. “[I]f I were a Democrat primary voter, I’d want these questions satisfactorily answered before I cast my final vote,” he said.Trump’s Big Lie About Joe Biden, Hunter Biden and Ukraine Falls ApartOn Monday, Johnson announced that the Senate oversight panel, which he chairs, would be moving forward with a subpoena for documents and testimony related to Hunter Biden’s service on the board of Burisma. And in the same breath he raised unanswered questions about the Bidens, the Wisconsin senator insisted that going after them was not his intention. “My investigations are not focused on the Bidens,” he said. “They just aren’t. But I can’t ignore them, because they’re part of the story. They made themselves part of the story... they made themselves part of this issue of legitimate investigation.”The idea that Republican lawmakers are providing a public service to Democratic primary voters was treated as absurd by Democrats on Wednesday. Instead, they saw the renewed interest in Hunter Biden and Burisma as a not-particularly-subtle attempt to tar Joe Biden by association—raising questions about his integrity that don’t need to be asked right as the general election is approaching. “Get ready,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), who has traveled with Johnson to Ukraine on several occasions. “The Senate is going to turn into an arm of the Trump campaign. I don’t think we’ve expected anything different. The President is willing to use all the official powers at his disposal to try to destroy his political rivals. The Senate Republicans gave him a pass on that, and thus it stands to reason they would attempt to do some version of the same thing.”The president’s allies allege that Biden, when he was vice president, corruptly endeavored to protect his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine by working to oust a Ukrainian prosecutor who was looking into corruption at Burisma. But that prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, had put those investigations aside. And while much was made by Republicans of Biden’s push to get rid of him, the Obama administration and U.S. allies wanted to see him gone, too, because he was seen as insufficiently committed to fighting corruption. Democrats Left Joe Biden for Dead. Then They Decided He Was Their SaviorNeither U.S. nor Ukrainian officials ever filed criminal charges against the Bidens, and the former Ukrainian prosecutor general, Yuriy Lutsenko, said in May 2019 that there was no evidence of wrongdoing. The Bidens themselves have denied wrongdoing, too. “We already knew that Donald Trump is terrified of facing Joe Biden—because he got himself impeached by trying to force a foreign country to spread lies about the Vice President on behalf of his re-election campaign,” said Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign. “Now, Senator Johnson just flat out conceded that this is a ham-handed effort to manipulate Democratic primary voters.”President Trump himself remains closely in touch with some of the most central figures off Capitol Hill trying to trigger investigations of the Biden family and Ukraine. On Wednesday, the president’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani told The Daily Beast that he was still in regular contact with Trump. Asked when the two of them last spoke, the Trump attorney replied, “yesterday”—the same day Biden dominated Super Tuesday’s Democratic contests and dramatically improved his chances of securing the party’s 2020 presidential nomination. Giuliani would not divulge the nature or subject matter of their Tuesday conversation. But the former New York mayor and leading Biden antagonist had previously vowed, following Trump’s acquittal in the Senate impeachment trial, to continue to probe the Bidens and Ukraine issues.As The Daily Beast reported last month, Giuliani has done so at the explicit encouragement of his client, with Trump, post-acquittal, privately urging his attorney to keep digging on the matter and to keep the president updated on whatever progress he makes.In early February, Giuliani said he was planning on “ramping up” his probes into Joe and Hunter Biden, claiming that “it’s a matter of the fair administration of justice for real.”In the Senate, that ramping-up was timed nicely with Biden’s reemergence in the Democratic race. On Sunday, the day after Biden’s comeback win in the South Carolina primary, Johnson sent a letter to members of his committee notifying them of plans to hold a vote on a subpoena for Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian diplomat who worked for a consulting firm, Blue Star Strategies, that represented Burisma in the U.S. GOP Base Is Hot to Probe Biden, Senate Republicans Not So MuchIn his letter, Johnson wrote that he is “convinced obtaining Mr. Telizhenko’s Blue Star documents and information is an important part of this investigation.” Telizhenko, reported The Daily Beast in November, has ties to Trumpworld figures like Rudy Giuliani, and helped spread the narrative popular among the president’s allies that Ukrainian officials meddled in the 2016 election to hurt Trump.A vote on the subpoena is scheduled for Mar. 11. If approved, it will be the first subpoena issued by Senate Republicans for anything related to Burisma. Asked to respond to allegations of fishy timing, Johnson scoffed. “They’re just wrong,” he said on Wednesday.The top Democrat on Johnson’s committee, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI), declined to say to reporters if he felt that the probe is politically motivated. He did oppose it, however, on the grounds it was a waste of time: “This investigation should not be part of what we're doing at Homeland Security,” said Peters. “There are too many other important issues that impact the security of our country.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

While Super Tuesday left the Democrats with a pair of front-runners whom President Donald Trump believes he can define and defeat, there are still some private worries in the White House. There is concern that the Democrats' messy nomination contest may end up producing an emboldened version of the very man who once worried Trump so much as a foe that it led to the president's impeachment.

Just hours after Joe Biden surged to the top of the Democratic presidential pack, Senate Republicans announced a new phase of their investigation targeting the former vice president and his son Hunter.

Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told reporters on Wednesday that he is likely to release an interim report within one to two months on his panel’s probe of Hunter Biden’s ties to a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma.

“These are questions that Joe Biden has not adequately answered,” Johnson said. “And if I were a Democrat primary voter, I’d want these questions satisfactorily answered before I cast my final vote.”

Johnson insisted that the timing of his probe has nothing to do with the election calendar. But the renewed focus on Biden, coinciding with his surge to frontrunner status, has alarmed House Democrats as they brace for an all-out GOP assault on Biden and his son over an issue that was litigated at length during President Donald Trump's impeachment trial.

Trump on Wednesday night on Fox said that the investigation into Biden and Ukraine “will be a major issue in the campaign, I will bring that up all the time because I don't see anyway out.”

Democrats are now warily eyeing Trump’s Twitter feed — and his Republican allies in the Senate like Johnson — for the return of the widely discredited corruption charges against Biden that had seemed to fade from consciousness along with Biden’s flagging campaign. But after Biden’s Super Tuesday romp, the Democrats who led the impeachment drive against Trump for his efforts to get Ukraine to investigate the Bidens are preparing for Burisma to make a return to the GOP playbook.

“After hearing nothing about Burisma over the course of the last couple weeks, the Republicans will revive it in a perfect demonstration of what this means to them, which is to be a cudgel to beat Joe Biden with,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee.

House Democrats are gearing up to charge Republicans who probe the Burisma matter with aiding a potential Russian disinformation campaign. Democrats raised alarms last year when reports, citing a third-party security firm, indicated Burisma had been hacked by Russian military operatives using tactics similar to those used to infiltrate the Democratic National Committee in 2016.

“I am concerned to see that in the Senate there seems to be a renewed interest in furthering these bogus Russian narratives through the use of their investigative powers,” said House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). “I just think it’s so deeply destructive to be effectively working in a concert with Russian propaganda artists.”

Schiff said he would use his perch on the committee to call out adversaries for “furthering Kremlin narratives.”

It's unclear whether House Intelligence Committee members were ever given official confirmation by intelligence officials that the Burisma hack occurred, and several members of the panel said they could neither confirm nor deny whether they had been briefed on the matter.

Yet Johnson contends that his plans have nothing to do with Biden’s 2020 pursuit.

“My investigations are not focused on the Bidens. They’re just not. But I can’t ignore them because they’re part of the story. They made themselves part of the story,” Johnson said. “If there’s wrongdoing, the American people need to know it. If there is no wrongdoing or nothing significant, the American people need to understand that as well.”

Johnson’s current posture marks a sharp departure from his position in 2016 when he and a bipartisan team of senators signed a letter supporting Biden’s efforts in Ukraine to crack down on corrupt prosecutor Viktor Shokin.

"Senator Johnson just accidentally did us an enormous favor by explicitly admitting that he is abusing congressional authority in a manner that would make the founding fathers spin in their graves,” Biden’s campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said in a statement Wednesday.

Yet the timing has raised protests from Democrats. On Monday, two days after Biden's South Carolina win, Johnson announced plans to subpoena records from a Democratic public affairs firm which, according to Johnson, “sought to leverage Hunter Biden’s role as a board member of Burisma to gain access to, and potentially influence matters at, the State Department.” Johnson revealed Wednesday that his committee will vote on the subpoena next week.

Johnson's Homeland Security panel, which has been working with the Senate Finance Committee to pursue allegations surrounding Ukraine’s role in the 2016 U.S. election, is also ramping up its investigative work.

“I don’t know why any member of my committee would vote against a subpoena that’s just looking for records from a U.S. consulting firm,” Johnson said.

Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, Johnson’s Democratic counterpart on the committee, opposes the broader investigation and the subpoena, which prompted Johnson to schedule a committee meeting to vote on it. But even some of Johnson’s fellow Republicans don’t appear to be on the same page. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) met with Johnson and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), the Finance Committee chairman, in December to warn them that their investigation could aid Russian intelligence, POLITICO previously reported.

And on Wednesday, Burr declined to answer reporters’ questions about the Burisma probe.

“I don’t get into what his staff works on,” Burr said. When asked about concerns that the information the committee receives could be discredited Russian material, Burr replied: “They’ve got to explore the issues that they think are important to them.”

Grassley similarly insisted the probe isn’t related to Biden’s candidacy, saying in a brief interview Wednesday morning that “this has nothing to do with the election” because the committees have been investigating Ukraine’s alleged role in the 2016 election since 2017.

“They may be coming together now, but that’s not how it started,” Grassley said.

Trump's legal team and allies in Congress spent months honing carefully crafted attacks on Biden and his family, relying on the dubious claims of two Ukrainian prosecutors, ousted for their own corrupt behavior, to allege Biden leaned on the Ukrainian government to protect his son from a corruption investigation into Burisma.

The charge has been refuted by senior State Department officials, who said Biden led anti-corruption efforts in Ukraine according to U.S. foreign policy and in partnership with U.S. allies. His efforts, they said, made it likelier that companies like Burisma would face legitimate scrutiny, rather than escape it.

But Trump pushed his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, to look into the matter last year — in a phone call that ultimately led the House to impeach Trump for abusing his power to damage a political rival. In response, the president’s legal team used the impeachment trial to lay out a case against Biden that Ukraine had refused to entertain. The Senate ultimately acquitted Trump, though a slew of Republicans agreed Trump acted inappropriately.

Though Burisma issue receded from the spotlight after Trump’s Feb. 5 acquittal and as Biden suffered drubbings in Iowa and New Hampshire primary contests, some Senate Republicans kept it simmering in the background. On the day of Trump’s acquittal, Johnson and Grassley requested Hunter Biden’s travel records from the Secret Service, part of an inquiry they launched as Democrats ramped up their impeachment push.

Democrats bracing for a second wave of Burisma attacks on Biden say they hope the vice president is prepared for the deluge. Biden unsettled some allies with his uneven responses to the Burisma attacks, and they view his revived fortunes as a fresh start. If he’s able to parry the attacks, some Democrats see the potential for it to backfire against Trump.

“Bringing that subject up only serves as a reminder of the president's impeachment conduct. I'd say it cuts both ways at a minimum,” said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), another Intelligence Committee member. “The president did something wrong. Joe Biden didn't.”

Some officials and even Biden’s Democratic allies agreed that the younger Biden’s decision to take a highly paid position on Burisma’s board while his father conducted U.S. foreign policy in Ukraine raised the appearance of a conflict of interest. It raised some flags among State Department officials at the time, too, though none suggested Biden took any actions contrary to U.S. foreign policy objectives in Ukraine.

Republicans have pointed to those conflict-of-interest concerns as the basis for probing the matter.