{"database": "press", "table": "releases", "rows": [["https://norman.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=1412", "Rep. Ralph Norman Leads Letter Probing Sale of Crude Oil From Strategic Petroleum Reserves to Company With Financial Ties to Hunter Biden", "2022-07-26", "2022", "2022-07", "Republican", "House", "SC", "Ralph Norman", "N000190", "norman.house.gov", "norman", "https://norman.house.gov/news/documentquery.aspx?DocumentTypeID=27", "scraper", "On Tuesday, Rep. Ralph Norman (R-SC) led 11 Members of the House of Representatives in a letter formally calling on President Biden to address allegations concerning potential unlawful activity in the sale of crude oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese company with financial ties to the President\u2019s son, Hunter Biden.\n\n\u201cIt has come to our attention that you, acting as President of the United States, participated in the sale of oil from the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a company with financial ties to your son, Hunter Biden,\u201d wrote the lawmakers, as first reported on Tuesday by The Epoch Times. \u201cThese allegations constitute an unethical and potentially illegal abuse of the powers of the office of the President of the United States.\u201d\n\nBackground\n\nOn May 24th, the Biden Administration announced its intent to release one million barrels of crude oil per day from our Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) for approximately six months. While the SPR is for national emergency purposes, the President nevertheless directed the release of this crude to try and mitigate Americans\u2019 frustration over rising gas prices under his leadership and policies.\n\nSince United States refineries are already operating near capacity, at least five million barrels of our SPR crude oil have been loaded on to tankers bound for Europe and Asia, instead of being refined here in the U.S.\n\nOn July 9th, the U.K. Daily Mail revealed that approximately 950,000 barrels of our nation\u2019s emergency crude oil had been sold to a Chinese company called Unipec. Holding a $1.7 billion stake in Unipec is the private equity firm Bohai Harvest RST, of which Hunter Biden remains as an executive with 10% ownership, according to recent reports.\n\nFor oversight and investigatory purposes, Tuesday\u2019s letter calls on various officials of the Biden Administration Biden to release documents and communications concerning Hunter Biden and the Administration\u2019s decisions concerning our nation\u2019s strategic reserves and Hunter Biden\u2019s overseas business dealings.\n\nStatement\n\nRep. Norman issued the following statement on Tuesday: \u201cIf Hunter Biden were instead Hunter Trump, every media outlet across this nation would be screaming non-stop about his shady dealings. It\u2019s bad enough that the President\u2019s policies have caused energy prices to skyrocket to the point where he felt compelled to release our emergency strategic reserves to artificially lower prices. The fact that his son stands to profit financially from this should outrage every American.\"", 1, "2026-03-30T01:40:41Z", "2026-04-08T02:49:02Z"]], "columns": ["url", "title", "date", "year", "month", "party", "chamber", "state", "member_name", "bioguide_id", "domain", "scraper", "source", "date_source", "text", "has_text", "collected_at", "updated_at"], "primary_keys": ["url"], "primary_key_values": ["https://norman.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=1412"], "units": {}, "query_ms": 0.8455011993646622, "source": "dwillis/congress-press", "source_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press", "license": "MIT", "license_url": "https://github.com/dwillis/congress-press/blob/main/LICENSE"}