Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is set to use Hunter Biden’s drug abuse as a defense against House Republican investigations into his potential wire fraud, tax evasion, and money laundering violations, among six others.

The House Oversight Committee will hold its first hearing on Wednesday about Hunter’s “Laptop from Hell” and the alleged incriminating evidence social media companies attempted to censor in 2020 before the presidential election. Ocasio-Cortez is seated on the committee and is ready to defend the president’s son from Republican investigations into nine potential violations, which Republicans say implicate President Joe Biden.

Speaking with Bloomberg on Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez framed the investigations into Hunter as “weaponizing” a committee to probe a private citizen who was on drugs. “And I think it’s especially atrocious given that this was a person who has been open about struggling with substance misuse and it’s just a horrifying thing to do.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., the vice ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, votes on a Democratic amendment to the rules during an organizational meeting for the 118th Congress, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Ocasio-Cortez’s framing of the probes mirrors the reported defense against the Justice Department’s investigation of Hunter for tax and gun violations. People familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal in October that Hunter’s drug abuse could be a scapegoat the defense could successfully use to defend the president’s son against potential charges.

Hunter’s drug abuse as a successful defense remains to be seen. Critics say Hunter’s drug abuse did not prevent him from raking in millions of dollars from foreign business deals while his father was an American official, offering no real work in return. Others simply argue Hunter’s drug abuse appeared to not inhibit his ability to influence peddling to the White House.

Questions remain if Joe Biden will be implicated in any potential wrongdoing by his family. Over 17 times, Joe Biden has been involved in the family business.

President Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden leave Holy Spirit Catholic Church in Johns Island, SC, after attending a Mass, Saturday, Aug. 13, 2022. Biden is in Kiawah Island with his family on vacation. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Hunter’s former business partner and whistleblower Tony Bobulinski believes Joe Biden has acted like the “chairman” of the organization, which Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), the third highest ranking House Republican, has coined the “Biden Crime Family” syndicate.

Fifty-eight percent of voters believe that Joe Biden has played a role in his family’s business dealings. Sixty percent say Hunter Biden has sold “influence and access” to the president.

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) told Breitbart News in November his investigation will focus on the Bidens’ bank records. U.S. banks have flagged over 150 suspicious financial transactions from Hunter and James Biden. The wire transfers included “large” amounts of money tripped for further review by American banks.

In January, the Treasury Department denied the committee’s request to disclose suspicious reports, causing the Comer to threaten a subpoena to obtain the records.

“[T]his coordinated effort by the Biden Administration to hide information about President Biden and his family’s shady business schemes is alarming and raises many questions,” he said.

In 2018 and 2020, Breitbart Senior Contributor and Government Accountability Institute President Peter Schweizer published Secret Empires and Profiles in Corruption. Each book hit #1 on the New York Times bestseller list and exposed how Hunter Biden and Joe Biden flew aboard Air Force Two in 2013 to China before Hunter’s firm inked a $1.5 billion deal with a subsidiary of the Chinese government’s Bank of China less than two weeks after the trip. Schweizer’s work also uncovered the Biden family’s other vast and lucrative foreign deals and cronyism.

Breitbart Political Editor Emma-Jo Morris’s investigative work at the New York Post on the Hunter Biden “laptop from hell” also captured international headlines when she, along with Miranda Devine, revealed that Joe Biden was intimately involved in Hunter’s businesses, appearing to even have a 10 percent stake in a company the scion formed with officials at the highest levels of the Chinese Communist Party.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.