WASHINGTON, D.C. – Evidence and testimony given to the House Ways and Means Committee by IRS whistleblowers, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, shows that during the course of their investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax crimes, any investigative lead that may have pointed to Joe Biden was stopped in its tracks. Launching a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, which was supported by every House Republican, allows Congress to follow the leads the whistleblowers identified.
1. Investigators were prevented from pursuing potential Biden campaign finance crimes.
Despite knowing Hunter Biden for only two months, Kevin Morris, a Biden donor and Hollywood attorney, paid off about $2 million of Hunter Biden’s unpaid tax liability in 2020 and supported his lifestyle to the tune of an additional nearly $3 million. While the timing of these payments in the middle of the 2020 campaign, at the height of the Democrat presidential primary, is suspicious on its own, the whistleblowers uncovered an email from Kevin Morris to a Biden family accountant where he acknowledged the “considerable risk personally and politically” of Hunter Biden’s unpaid taxes.
The only political liability of Hunter Biden’s tax crimes would have been directly to that of his father’s campaign for president. Members of Congress, and candidates for president, must all abide by campaign finance limits. Donations exceeding those limits are serious campaign finance crimes. However, when Special Agent Ziegler expressed concern with the $2 million payment by Morris, U.S. Attorney Leslie Wolf stated she was not “personally interested” in pursuing it.
Special Agent Ziegler explained his concern with Kevin Morris’s payments during a Ways and Means hearing earlier this month:
Rep. David Kustoff (TN-08): When Kevin Morris says to Troy Schmidt on February 7, 2020, “We are under considerable risk personally and politically to get the returns in,” do you know what that means?
Special Agent Ziegler: So Hunter Biden isn’t running for office. The fact that it puts them at risk personally and politically, it would be something that I would want to investigate further.
[Later…]
Kustoff: And Kevin Morris is the individual who personally paid some of Hunter Biden’s tax liability. Is that right?
Special Agent Ziegler: Paid a significant amount of Hunter Biden’s tax liability.
2. References to Joe Biden were removed from a search warrant at DOJ’s direction.
U.S. Attorney Wolf, the same DOJ prosecutor who was not “personally interested” in potential campaign finance crimes, also directed IRS investigators to remove all reference to “Political Figure 1” from a search warrant. Political Figure 1 is Joe Biden.
3. Investigative leads – that normally would have been followed in the course of any other investigation – were shut down.
In his testimony, Special Agent Gary Shapley explained how they were blocked from investigating financial transactions between father and son, leads which would normally have been pursued.
Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA-01): Did your gut tell you that Joe Biden was benefiting in any way from any of Hunter’s criminal proceeds?
Special Agent Shapley: We were interested in following leads that went to Joe Biden – President Biden – not because he was Vice President, but because in any normal investigation, if you see financial transactions between son and father, and email correspondence going back and forth, text messages, and WhatsApp messages, in every investigation we have ever worked, we would follow those leads to the father…We’ll never know because we weren’t allowed to investigate…For example, we wanted to go and say, “location data – we want to look into that.” And you know, it just wasn’t supported, and things just fell off the priority list.
Fitzpatrick: [Were you] stopped because of who it was? Could you even offer a hunch about what you would have found?
Special Agent Shapley: When you see 10 held by H for the big guy and we have other correspondence where they are saying, don’t call dad – you know, call dad something else, call him – because we are trying to confuse or conceal who it is, that is issue for concern. And was there 10 percent that went to the big guy? We will never know because we weren’t allowed to investigate that.
[Later…]
Fitzpatrick: What were the red flags that – as an agent, you saw a red flag. You wanted to go down that path. You were prevented from doing so. We are not prevented from doing so. We have tools at our disposal that we can see if that evidence exists or doesn’t.
Special Agent Ziegler: This is new information: In 2020, 2021, 2022 Hunter Biden received approximately $4.9 million in payments for personal expenses. Again, in the form of a loan or gift from Democratic donor, Kevin Morris. We have a reason to believe that Kevin Morris was on phone calls with the presidential campaign prior to Joe Biden securing the presidency. So you have the email. “Personally and politically.” Hunter Biden wasn’t running for office, so who is who is impacted politically by Hunter Biden’s tax returns not being filed? Look at when did he meet Kevin Morris and when were the tax payments made? It’s about two months [after] meeting him.
4. Special Agent Joseph Ziegler told the committee any investigative leads that would have led to Joe Biden were “off the table.”
The IRS investigators identified troubling instances where there was clear communication between then-Vice President Biden and his son’s business associates that often coincided with official government activity. In any other investigation, they would have been justified to pursue more details about those communications.
Rep. Drew Ferguson (GA-03): Given Mr. Schwerin’s role in Hunter Biden’s businesses, did you find this back and forth [with Joe Biden] of interest?
Special Agent Ziegler: At the time, I didn’t know about it. But looking back at this now? Yes, it is of interest.
Ferguson: And so you would have at that point, at that time, you would have followed up on this and you would have further investigated this relationship?
Special Agent Ziegler: Well, that’s the complex part about this is at the end of the day, any questions that might have led to former Vice President, they were kind of off the table, and we brought forward multiple exhibits that show that even questions that I wanted to ask weren’t asked, and if those questions led to the former Vice President, they weren’t asked, and that was a part of not following the normal process that we would want to find out what that interaction was.
Additionally, according to Special Agent Ziegler, during the investigators’ interview of President Biden’s brother, James Biden, the Department of Justice created an environment where investigators felt they could not ask questions about whether Joe Biden was involved in his family’s business deal with a Chinese energy company. This is despite the fact that whistleblowers had obtained a WhatsApp message that seemed to indicate President Biden was at a minimum aware of the deal, if not involved.
Special Agent Ziegler: “Again, [they] would not allow us to follow normal investigative leads and fully understand the business relationship between James Biden and his family.”