Politico reports:

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.

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. [Continue reading…]