House Republicans are pushing for evidence collected as part of the Justice Department's prosecution of a former Hunter Biden associate.

Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a Tuesday letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting records related to DOJ’s case against Patrick Ho, an official with a Chinese oil and gas company. Ho, whom the duo calls a “close business associate of Hunter Biden,” was later sentenced to prison in the United States on international bribery and money laundering charges.

The House Republicans wrote in their letter, a copy of which was first obtained by POLITICO, that as part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden “the Committees have determined that there is a particular need to obtain certain materials the Department of Justice (DOJ) obtained during its investigation of” Ho.

The request is a fresh sign that Republicans are probing Hunter Biden’s Chinese business deals as they try to find a still-elusive smoking gun linking actions taken by Joe Biden as vice president or president to his family’s business arrangements.

Republicans want an unreacted copy of an email between Ho and Serbian politician Vuk Jeremić about “an individual that Mr. Jeremic was willing to bring to a dinner” with Ye Jianming, the chair of the Chinese company, after DOJ successfully got the name of the individual redacted during the trial. DOJ requested the step over concerns that the name could “introduce a political dimension to this case.”

The lawmakers also want a copy of Ho’s iPad that DOJ has seized. A spokesperson for the Justice Department confirmed receipt of the letter, but declined to comment further.

It’s hardly the first time either Ho or Jeremic has cropped up in the House Republican investigation. Republicans requested testimony from Jeremic last year, hoping that he could provide details on the redaction.

The Washington Post reported in 2022 on Hunter Biden’s business dealings in China, including an email Jeremic had written to the president’s son about a dinner he was hosting in Washington with Ye Jianming, chair of the Chinese company. While Jeremic invited Hunter Biden to attend, he ultimately was unable to.

Jeremic told The Washington Post at the time that while he knew Hunter Biden and Ye that he was “not involved in their mutual introduction” and found out that they had met through media reports.

The impeachment effort is all but certain to die in the Democratic-controlled Senate, which has the final say over removing officials under the Constitution.

The Senate is preparing to quickly dispense with the House GOP's much-touted impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

Republicans across the Capitol crowed about their recommendation that the Senate boot Mayorkas from office in protest of his handling to the southern border — a vote that took them two attempts to pull off. Now that the House is done impeaching, however, some Senate Democrats are predicting that a snoozer will result from all the hype.

“We view it as a stunt,” Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said of Senate Democrats’ outlook on the Mayorkas impeachment. “I bet the preference is going to be to spend as little time on it as possible so we can focus on [spending], the [national security aid debate] ... and then I think we also want to take up the House's bipartisan tax reform bill.”

Kaine added that, while the structure of any Mayorkas trial is up to leadership, Democrats have tools they can use to shortcut the proceedings right from the start.

“There's different options. Do you do a motion to dismiss? Do you recommit to committee? I don't know what the leadership is going to decide," he said.

A motion to dismiss the articles of impeachment against Mayorkas would not be without precedent. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) attempted to use a motion to dismiss at former President Donald Trump's second impeachment trial, but the vote failed.

Senate Democratic leadership has already laid out some plans for the trial. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s office said House impeachment managers will present the articles of impeachment to the Senate after this week's recess. Senators will be sworn in as jurors the next day and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) will preside over the proceedings.

Schumer himself has called the Mayorkas impeachment a "sham" and insisted "House Republicans failed to present any evidence of anything resembling an impeachable offense."

Senate conservatives are still pushing for more action, though. A group of them sent a letter Tuesday morning urging Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to "ensure that the Senate conducts a proper trial." The letter was signed by 13 Senate Republicans in total.

But that saber-rattling can only go so far. McConnell does not have control over Senate floor proceedings — and plenty of his Republican members have cast their own doubts about the House's rationale for impeaching Mayorkas in the first place.

NY Post readers discuss whether the House was right to impeach Homeland Security boss Alejandro Mayorkas.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) declined to endorse President Joe Biden for reelection during a Monday evening interview on CNN.

"I'm not endorsing anybody right now. We're gonna see what happens. We still got plenty of time," the centrist West Virginian said. Here's three reasons the apparent snub shouldn't really be a shock to anyone.

1. This is quintessential Manchin. The centrist likes leaving himself lots of options and not being boxed in.

In 2020 — months after voting to convict former President Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial — Manchin refused to rule out endorsing him for reelection. That was, of course, before the insurrection of Jan. 6. Manchin now says "I love my country too much to vote for Donald Trump."

But bucking conventional wisdom has been a long-time trend for the lawmaker. He endorsed GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski's (R-Alaska) reelection bid in 2022. He cut an ad for a West Virginia Republican locked in a bitter primary battle (who ultimately lost).

2. There's still the possible third-party path: Manchin only took his name out of contention for a possible third-party bid last week, but is still holding open the possibility that someone else takes the plunge. "You just might have still a third-party run from No Labels," he said of the centrist group. "We'll just see what opportunities and what type of options you have."

3. His policy disagreements with the Biden administration are real — and deep. Manchin, who chairs the Energy Committee, has gone to battle over the Biden administration's implementation of its signature tax, climate and health care law, which he played an outsized role in shaping. “They’re going to try to screw me,” Manchin said at one point in 2023 of the White House.

He's often voted with Republicans to (ultimately unsuccessfully) ax Biden administration environmental regulations. He's vowed to oppose all Biden administration EPA nominees over a sweeping plan aimed at curbing power plant emissions. And he declined to hold a confirmation hearing for a key energy regulator over disagreements over climate, effectively ending his tenure.

None of these are terribly surprising for the lawmaker stemming from ruby-red and fossil fuel-heavy West Virginia. But these are not trivial disagreements with the Biden administration.

House Republicans expressed few regrets this week for their decision to oust the scandal-plagued George Santos or even for their inability to hold his seat this past Tuesday.

That loss, in a closely watched special election in New York’s third congressional district, has further narrowed an already-thin GOP House majority. But those Republicans who gave Santos the boot said they’d do it again. Some bristled at the idea that they’d now reconsider. “I didn’t shrink the Republican majority — George Santos shrunk it by his actions,” said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.). “I’m sorry, you have to have standards in the halls of Congress. And so I don’t regret voting to expel George Santos. He was unfit to serve … Sometimes these decisions are bigger than politics.”

The Santos saga hasn’t just forced Republicans to weigh the ethical transgressions they’d tolerate for a more powerful grip on the House chamber. It has required them to confront the possibility that their formula for winning some battleground seats like his — a combination of tough-on-the-border and tough-on-crime politics — may not be the blueprint they imagined for November.

But few seem eager to see the party make major structural or policy changes after Democrat Tom Suozzi won the special election convincingly. Instead, lawmakers accused Republican Mazi Pilip of running a bad campaign, noted that now-President Joe Biden won the district by more than eight points in 2020, and pointed to myriad isolated factors — everything from poor party financing, to bad weather, to Santos’ “taint” — to explain away Tuesday’s loss.

“Congratulations to the Democrats, they spent $15 million and won a seat Biden won by eight points, by less than eight points,” National Republican Congressional Committee Chair Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. His takeaway: “If they outspend us three-to-one, they can win Biden plus-8 seats.”

While Democrats did majorly outspend Republicans in the New York race, pouring $14.4 million into political ads in the district compared to the GOP’s $8.5 million, Long Island has raced to the right in the years since Biden’s win. The district had swung so far that Santos won by nearly eight points in 2022 in a race that drew little national attention. Hudson’s dismissiveness belied the hope that many Republicans previously expressed for retaining the seat.

It also wasn’t shared by everyone in the party.

Some members expressed concern that months of dysfunction in the GOP-led House had left them with few clear wins to tout to voters beyond the impeachment of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and the passage of a major immigration overhaul early this Congress that is going nowhere in the Senate.

“I think ultimately we always have to be judged on both what we try to achieve and what we actually achieve,” said Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.). “And we have to achieve more.”

Others, particularly those who originally opposed ousting Santos, said that the original sin the party made was to boot him from the chamber before there was a conviction.

“Don't expel a Republican member of Congress that hasn't been convicted of a crime and is a good vote,” said Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who added that she planned to talk to her conference about the perils of Republican infighting.

Santos himself said House Republicans at large regret pushing him out now that their margin has shrunk even further, telling POLITICO that Pilip’s loss meant taking away voters’ “duly elected choice and recalling their election without allowing them to make that decision in November.”

But as the party took stock of Tuesday night’s election, in which their margin was shaved down to a mere two seats, many seemed simply uninterested in, or disinclined to do, any type of second guessing.

That mindset applied to the tactical choices the party had made in contesting the special election.

“I think our committee did a good job. I think our candidate did a good job,” said senior GOP member Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.). “You don't know how much of it was weather related and all that and there's always a lot of individual factors.”

It applied to the vote to expel Santos, too.

“My vote was not contingent on the outcome of the election. It was based on what I thought was the right thing to do,” said Rep. John Curtis (R-Utah), who is running for Senate in 2024. “If it was the right thing to do, then the seat doesn’t matter.”

“I wish we would have won it, but so be it,” said Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.)

Santos was first elected in 2022 in a shocking upset, besting Democrat Robert Zimmerman in a race that many thought would not be competitive. But even before he was sworn in, his lies started to unravel. Among the litany of falsehoods he pedaled: Claiming his grandparents were Holocaust survivors, that he had employees who survived the deadly shooting at Pulse nightclub in Orlando; and that his mother was in Manhattan during the Sept. 11 attacks.

A damning 56-page report released last year by the House Ethics Committee found that Santos likely broke federal laws by inappropriately spending campaign funds and working to obscure his trail of campaign money. And when the House voted 311-114 to expel him in December, the vote was notably bipartisan, with 105 Republicans lining up against him.

The loss of his seat on Tuesday was one of a string of almost uninterrupted defeats the GOP has suffered across the country since the midterms. Arguably the biggest of those losses was in Wisconsin. In the most expensive state Supreme Court race ever, a liberal candidate blew out a former conservative justice last spring, flipping the balance of power on the court and leading to the potential break-up of the GOP's durable legislative gerrymander.

Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear won reelection in 2023 despite the otherwise deep red tilt of his state. And Democrats took complete control — albeit narrowly — of the Virginia legislature despite a major investment from GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin. Candidates in special legislative elections last year ran, on average, eight points ahead of Biden's margins.

Still, some Republicans running in competitive districts were not discouraged by Tuesday’s outcome. Republican Alison Esposito, who is challenging Rep. Pat Ryan (D-N.Y.) in his lower Hudson Valley district in New York, said immigration will continue to be an important issue.

“It is clear that Tom Suozzi did a complete 180 on his views on immigration and securing the southern border,” she said in a statement. “He couldn’t run away from the Biden agenda and his past policy mistakes fast enough.”

Other Republicans, including those who voted to expel Santos, made the case that more distance from the ex-representative would, ultimately, serve the party better.

“Probably there was still some Santos taint,” said Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), in downplaying Tuesday’s results. “So it's not representative of our prospects.”

Anthony Adragna, Nicholas Wu, Daniella Diaz, Madison Fernandez and Zach Montellaro contributed to this report.