Rep. Blake Moore questions the extent of President Biden’s involvement in family business dealings
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Rep. Blake Moore attended a closed-door committee hearing Tuesday with two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers, who alleged the Department of Justice gave the president’s son preferential treatment while investigating him.
Moore, who represents Utah’s 1st District, told the Deseret News Wednesday that the focus of the hearing wasn’t about Hunter Biden’s tax crimes or the Biden family receiving “many, many millions of dollars from foreign entities.”
The inquiry was about President Joe Biden, who was the vice president and was campaigning for president during the DOJ investigation, and “to what extent was he involved?” the Utah representative said.
For Moore, the fundamental question raised by the testimonies of IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler is whether President Biden was in the know about the slow-walked DOJ investigation, which seemed evident through email and WhatsApp communications, he said.
He said the testimonies fueled concerns about the alleged preferential treatment and the president’s involvement in the investigation of his son’s tax crimes.
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On Tuesday evening, Ways and Means Committee chairman Jason Smith laid out what he called “never before seen evidence” on Hunter and Joe Biden in a series of posts on X, formerly known as Twitter.
The whistleblowers released 327 emails then-Vice President Joe Biden sent and received from his son, Hunter Biden, his brother James Biden, and a family business associate, Eric Schwerin.
These emails reveal the aliases the senior Biden used, like Robin Ware, JRB Ware and Robert L. Peters.
Smith, R-Mo., said 54 emails were exchanged between Schwerin and Biden, noting a spike in communication during Biden’s trips to Ukraine in 2014.
Three days before the visit to Kyiv in June 2014, the business associate and Biden emailed at least five times, and 27 more times after Biden returned.
The Missouri representative said the evidence suggests Biden threatened to withhold $1 billion in aid to Ukraine if the country didn’t fire the prosecutors investigating the Burisma Group, a Ukrainian company where Hunter Biden served on the board of directors. This “benefited the Biden family” while Hunter Biden did not pay taxes on his income from Burisma, Smith said.
Additionally, Smith claimed, the Biden administration and Obama administration refused to turn over records where the senior Biden used his aliases, adding, “What was Joe Biden hiding?”
Smith said he believes Hunter Biden was selling access to his family’s political power. The whistleblower documents show Hunter Biden earned $1 million for providing legal services to Patrick Ho, the then-chairman of a Chinese energy company. “Except, it does not appear that Hunter Biden ever provided legal services,” the chairman of the Ways and Means committee said. “It appears that Ho was trying to buy political access.”
When Ho was arrested in 2017 for bribing African leaders in exchange for government contracts, his first phone call was to James Biden.
President Biden on Wednesday said the allegations against his brother and son are lies. A reporter asked the president whether he was involved in his family’s business dealings, Biden said, “I’m not going to comment on that. I did not and it’s just a bunch of lies.”
CNN’s Manu Raju reported on X Tuesday that House GOP leaders are contemplating introducing a vote to authorize an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, with several swing-state lawmakers saying they will vote for such a motion instead of supporting articles of impeachment.
On the possibility of an impeachment inquiry, White House spokesperson Ian Sams said, “Marjorie Taylor Greene may be clamoring for the House to proceed to impeachment, but numerous House Republicans have already gone on record that the evidence just doesn’t back it up,” as MSNBC reporter Kyle Griffin posted on X.
“All these House Republicans and their colleagues should answer for why they would change tune now and go along with her baseless exercise to smear President Biden when their allegations have already been thoroughly fact-checked and debunked,” Sams said.
Contributing: Brigham Tomco
