Treasury Department official Jonathan Davidson, who is set to testify this week about the agency withholding the Biden family’s “suspicious” bank records, worked as the Biden-Harris Transition’s Economic Nominations Confirmation team lead in 2020 and was nominated to the position at the Treasury by President Joe Biden, raising questions of whether his testimony will be tainted with political bias.
On Friday, Davidson is scheduled to appear before the House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY) and answer questions about why the Treasury has refused to provide the committee with James and Hunter Biden’s 150 suspicious activity reports (SARs) generated by U.S. banks. SARs often contain evidence of potential criminal activities, such as money laundering and fraud. The disclosure would greatly help Comer investigate the Biden family, along with Eric Schwerin, for nine violations, including wire fraud and money laundering.
Considering Davidson will be asked to speak to the Biden family’s SARs after working for Joe Biden, his partisan work history raises questions of whether his scheduled testimony will be tainted with political bias.
Davidson has been a well-connected, partisan political operative for decades. In 2020, he worked for Biden’s transition team as the team lead of economic nominations confirmation. He was then nominated by Joe Biden and confirmed in November 2021 by the Senate as assistant secretary for legislative affairs at the Treasury.
Before serving Biden on the transition team, he worked on Capitol Hill for more than 20 years in Democrat politics. Davidson was chief counsel to U.S. Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) and chief of staff in Sen. Michael Bennet’s (D-CO) office, where he was reportedly instrumental in passing a tax credit within Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package that experts believe greatly fueled the president’s 40-year-high inflation.
Upon Biden’s nomination of Davidson to the Senate, Bennet praised Biden for selecting Davidson for the role. “President Biden could not have made a better choice than selecting Jon to serve as the Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs at the Treasury Department,” the Democrat senator claimed.
Davidson is married with children and reportedly lives in the expensive Capitol Hill neighborhood. His wife, Erin Sheehy, is a partner at Education Forward DC, an organization that seeks to “advance quality and equity in DC public schools.” Sheehy appears to hold similar political views as her husband. In 2020, she campaigned for Joe Biden. “I’m attending Joe Biden for President’s event, ‘Women for Biden Weekly Phone Bank’ – sign up now to join me!” she tweeted.
Davidson’s political background comes as he currently works for a nonpartisan, taxpayer-funded agency that has refused to work with Comer’s investigation of the Biden family. On Saturday, Davidson finally agreed to testify before the Oversight Committee after previously denying the committee’s request for the SARs. Davidson’s denial cited “improper disclosure” of relevant information that could reduce the Biden administration’s ability to “conduct of law enforcement, intelligence, and national security activities.”
Comer has questioned why the Treasury has refused to comply with his committee while the Department has provided the same requested SARs to a separate congressional office.
“We are concerned the Treasury Department is acting in bad faith to produce these documents to the Oversight Committee when we know that it has already produced them to another congressional office,” Comer wrote Saturday. “At next week’s hearing, a Treasury Department official can explain to Congress and the American people why the department is hiding critical information.”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.