House Republicans have concluded their impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden after finding that the president engaged in “impeachable conduct” to further his family’s years-long influence-peddling campaign, which racked up more than $27 million from foreign sources made to believe they could influence the operations of American government through their access to the Biden family.
Foreign individuals and entities from Ukraine, China, Russia, Romania, and Kazakhstan sent the Biden family and its business associates millions through shell companies designed to obscure the source of those funds, House Republicans determined. Hundreds of thousands of dollars from those business dealings, including funds traced to China, went directly to Joe Biden.
The House Ways and Means, Oversight, and Judiciary committees released a lengthy final report Monday detailing each facet of the impeachment inquiry, putting an end to a high-profile congressional probe into the Biden family’s overseas business enterprise and the long-running criminal investigation into Hunter Biden that will culminate with his upcoming criminal tax trial.
The report suggests that Joe Biden committed “impeachable conduct” but defers to the judgment of lawmakers in assessing whether the Biden family’s influence peddling merits impeachment.
“The totality of the corrupt conduct uncovered by the Committees is egregious. President Joe Biden conspired to commit influence peddling and grift. In doing so, he abused his office and, by repeatedly lying about his abuse of office, has defrauded the United States to enrich his family. Not one of these transactions would have occurred, but for Joe Biden’s official position in the United States government. This pattern of conduct ensured his family—who provided no legitimate services—lived a lavish lifestyle,” the report asserts.
“The Constitution’s Remedy for a President’s flagrant abuse of office is clear: impeachment by the House of Representatives and removal by the Senate. Despite the cheapening of the impeachment power by Democrats in recent years, the House’s decision to pursue articles of impeachment must not be made lightly. As such, this report endeavors to present the evidence gathered to date so that all Members of the House may assess the extent of President Biden’s corruption,” the report adds.
While serving as vice president in the Obama administration, Joe Biden met many of his son’s foreign business associates, witnesses recalled, bolstering the Biden family “brand” and enabling his wayward son to profit handsomely off his name. Additionally, the Biden family has received $8 million in loans from Democratic donors, and a significant portion of those loans have not been repaid. The main benefactor to the Biden family is Hunter Biden’s friend, Hollywood attorney Kevin Morris, who sat alongside members of the Biden entourage at Hunter’s criminal gun trial earlier this year.
House Republicans relied on a trove of financial documents, including bank records reflecting the flow of money to various Biden family shell companies, internal communications, and witness testimony to ascertain the size and scope of the influence-peddling operation. The probe also featured IRS whistleblower testimony accusing Justice Department officials of serious misconduct over the course of the Hunter Biden tax investigation.
The bank records reflected the millions of dollars that flowed from Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, Chinese infrastructure conglomerate CEFC, Romanian oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu, Russian oligarch Elena Baturina, and Kazakhstani oligarch Kenes Rakishev into holding corporations run by Hunter Biden and his business partners from 2014 to 2019.
Several of those businessmen – Devon Archer, Tony Bobulinski, Jason Galanis, and Rob Walker – recalled Joe Biden shaking hands with and speaking to his son’s business partners at various stages in their dealings. Eric Schwerin, Hunter’s accountant and business partner, helped out Joe Biden with his finances during Joe’s vice presidency. Last summer, Archer, a former close friend of Hunter’s, testified about the Biden family “brand” and Joe’s handshakes with his son’s foreign business partners at lavish dinners.
Earlier this year, Bobulinski and Galanis testified about how Hunter got his father involved with Chinese and Russian business deals. Bobulinski vividly recalled a meeting between himself, Hunter, Jim, and Joe Biden over a business proposal with CEFC called SinoHawk that would have featured $10 million in startup capital. Those discussions featured the infamous “10 held by H for the big guy” suggestion from business partner James Gilliar during an email thread. Galanis is currently incarcerated for his participation in a fraudulent bond issuance scheme and claims the Justice Department has retaliated against him for speaking out.
In February, Hunter Biden testified and admitted that his father met and spoke to his business partners, but downplayed the significance of those interactions. However, he repeatedly emphasized his view that his father played no part in his business enterprise – a view echoed by his uncle Jim Biden, Walker, and Schwerin. Hunter and Jim Biden strongly criticized Bobulinski and claimed he was simply disgruntled after a deal he helped negotiate with CEFC fell through.
In addition to the Biden family’s influence-peddling operation, the impeachment probe also examined whistleblower claims that the Biden Justice Department had soft pedaled the investigation into Hunter’s alleged tax crimes. Veteran IRS agents Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler came forward last summer with bombshell accusations of misconduct from Justice Department officials tasked with handling the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes. Both IRS whistleblowers described a process of deliberate slow walking and obstruction of basic investigative steps – a process that allowed serious potential charges to lapse for alleged violations committed in 2014-15 and defied standard operating procedures for typical tax-evasion probes.
On top of that, Shapley and Ziegler turned over hundreds of pages of documents to the Ways and Means Committee that shined more light on Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings, the misconduct in the Hunter Biden case, and Hunter’s apparent failure to pay his taxes in a timely manner.
The most recent cache of those documents appeared to contradict Hunter Biden’s congressional testimony, and formed the basis of the House GOP’s criminal referrals to the Justice Department that alleged Hunter and James Biden lied under oath. House Republicans also corroborated the IRS whistleblower allegations with testimony from DOJ, FBI, and IRS officials who participated in the Hunter Biden case at various stages. Hunter Biden is currently suing the IRS for what his lawyers believe constitute illegal taxpayer disclosures, and the IRS whistleblowers are seeking to join the agency in fighting the lawsuit.
Soon after the whistleblowers came forward, the Justice Department’s generous guilty plea deal with Hunter Biden collapsed upon scrutiny from Delaware federal judge Maryellen Noreika. Biden was expected to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges in Delaware and sign a pretrial diversion agreement for a single gun felony after Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss spent the better part of five years overseeing the criminal investigation. The failed plea deal, and the avalanche of criticism it drew, prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland to name Weiss special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation last August.
Weiss and his team of prosecutors subsequently got a conviction against Hunter Biden on three federal gun charges for lying about his drug addiction on gun paperwork and possessing a firearm while he was addicted to crack cocaine six years ago. More relevant to the impeachment inquiry is Hunter Biden’s tax trial, set to begin in early September, for nine tax charges stemming from his alleged failure to pay over $1.4 million in taxes over a four-year period.
The devastating tax-evasion indictment against Biden in December noted his Ukrainian, Romanian, and Chinese business dealings – and his lavish lifestyle – to help explain how he made roughly $7 million from 2016 to 2020. The indictment served as long-awaited vindication for conservatives who spent half a decade pointing out Hunter’s lucrative foreign business schemes, and it vindicated the IRS whistleblowers. Biden has pleaded not guilty to all the tax charges.
At the tax trial, emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop and his foreign business dealings will likely feature prominently, because the income he made from his overseas ventures is relevant to the tax case. The Justice Department introduced the laptop at the gun trial and had FBI special agent Erica Jensen testify to its authenticity by explaining the process for how the FBI verified the contents on the device in late 2019, roughly a year before the New York Post first reported on the emails contained in it.
Already, the Justice Department has said in court papers that Biden and his business partners agreed to lobby the U.S. government on Popoviciu’s behalf, accusations Biden’s attorneys have disputed. Nonetheless, foreign agent charges are not part of the tax case.
House Republicans accused the White House of obstructing the impeachment inquiry by failing to allow witnesses to testify and preventing the National Archives from handing over relevant documents, especially as it pertains to the classified documents section of the inquiry. Separately from special counsel Robert Hur’s investigation, House Republicans investigated Joe Biden’s handling of classified documents when he was a private citizen.
At each step of the impeachment inquiry, the White House and Joe Biden himself strongly denied that he played any role in his son’s foreign business dealings or the apparent misconduct among Justice Department officials on the Hunter Biden case.
In a similar fashion, Hunter Biden and his lead attorney, Abbe Lowell, have consistently downplayed and denied the findings from the impeachment probe, casting it as a partisan witch hunt rather than a serious investigation. But, when Joe Biden’s political future was crumbling last month, his son became his de-facto chief of staff, putting to bed their claims that Hunter’s professional life was completely separate from his father’s.
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