First son Hunter Biden apparently referred to his father, President Biden, as “my family’s only asset” while discussing his overseas business ventures in June 2017, according to new IRS whistleblower documents released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee.
Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) told reporters Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler had furnished the panel with more than 700 pages of additional messages, emails and documents about their five-year probe of Hunter, now 53.
The evidence dump came hours before the House Oversight Committee will hold its first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, which was ordered Sept. 12 by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.
The disclosures included a June 6, 2017, text message from Hunter in which he appears to acknowledge that his foreign interests were only undertaken to promote his “family’s brand.”
“It’s plane [sic] f—ing English. Why in gods [sic] name would I give this marginal bully the keys [to] my family’s only asset?” Hunter vented to a business associate identified only as “James,” — likely James Gilliar, who received just over $1 million the previous March from another Biden family associate, Rob Walker.
Hunter’s efforts, Smith said, resulted in the Biden family raking in at least $20 million from entities in at least seven countries, on which the first son evaded tax payments.
At the same time, the president was aware of his son’s business and crossed paths with several of Hunter’s associates in meetings and phone calls, Smith added.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry Tuesday into President Biden — turbocharging congressional power to acquire documents and testimony about Biden’s role in his family’s foreign business dealings while he was vice president.
House Republicans already have issued an array of demands to executive branch agencies relating to Joe Biden’s involvement with first son Hunter Biden and first brother James Biden’s international dealings — in many cases setting September deadlines that could soon escalate into litigation.
The inquiry aims to answer a number of questions:
While vice president, Joe Biden used the pseudonyms “Robert L. Peters” and “Robin Ware” to communicate with staff members — leaving a paper trail of nearly 5,400 written records.
The House Oversight Committee demanded those communications from the National Archives with an Aug. 31 deadline, but a source tells The Post the agency did not comply.
Congressional Republicans are preparing to issue subpoenas to banks for accounts held by Hunter and James Biden — after previously subpoenaing some of the associates’ bank statements.
The records could show whether any money was transferred to Joe Biden from his relatives’ foreign income streams and also whether they covered a substantial portion of his expenses. It’s possible the House will later seek the president’s bank records too.
“These documents show a clearer connection between Joe Biden, his public office, and Hunter Biden’s global influence peddling scheme that resulted in over $20 million in payments to the Biden family,” Smith said. “In addition to then Vice-President Joe Biden attending lunches and speaking on the phone with his son’s business associates, the details released today paint a fuller picture of how Joe Biden’s vice- presidential office was instrumental to the Biden Family’s business schemes.
“The evidence shows a pattern of Hunter Biden creating for-profit entities to shield at least $20 million from foreign sources from taxes and hide the trail of payments that led to members of the Biden family,” Smith went on. “The growing body of evidence further calls into question the Justice Department’s attempted sweetheart plea deal for Hunter Biden, and the reasons for appointing the architect of that plea deal as the special counsel for Hunter Biden’s case, in light of officials’ efforts to protect President Biden and his son.”
Hunter Biden is scheduled to appear in Delaware federal court Oct. 3 to answer to gun charges — but has so far avoided further indictments initially sought by IRS tax investigators, including for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Shapley and Ziegler went to the Ways and Means Committee this past spring with claims that the Justice Department had interfered in the investigation of the first son.
In one email released Wednesday, then-Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf told a group of investigators — including Ziegler — that then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was outside the “scope” of their probe and “[t]here should be nothing” about him included.
“Please focus on FARA evidence only,” Wolf wrote in her Aug. 7, 2020, response to a draft search warrant — approximately three months before the 2020 election.
Shapley also took note of one Justice Department official saying they were not “personally interested” in a May 2021 report compiled by tax investigators that noted potential “campaign finance criminal violations” related to Hunter’s “sugar brother” attorney Kevin Morris, who had helped the first son pay off more than $2 million in tax liabilities.
In another email, a CNN producer told IRS investigators in September 2021 that he received an email from Hunter Biden in which the first son said he had expected all his troubles to vanish once his father became president.
“IRS investigators provided worksheets they compiled as part of their investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax crimes, which connect his business activities to official government activity while Joe Biden served as vice president” Smith told reporters.
“This file makes it abundantly clear that IRS investigators were concerned there was in fact a connection between Hunter Biden’s global influence peddling Joe Biden and official US government activity.”
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