A top House Republican investigator said the Biden administration “may be obstructing justice” following revelations of a whistleblower
IRS
agent who claimed the federal
Hunter Biden
investigation has been
infected by “politics” and “preferential treatment.”
Rep. James Comer (R-KY)
, chairman of the
House Oversight and Accountability Committee
, told the Washington Examiner in a statement that “it’s deeply concerning that the Biden administration may be obstructing justice by blocking efforts to charge Hunter Biden for tax violations.” Comer added that “we’ve been wondering all along where the heck the DOJ and the IRS have been” and argued that “now it appears the Biden administration may have been working overtime to prevent the Bidens from facing any consequences.”
The
bombshell whistleblower claims
came from a career IRS criminal supervisory special agent who said he has been overseeing “the ongoing and sensitive investigation” of a “high-profile” and “controversial subject” since early 2020. A source familiar with the letter told the Washington Examiner that this is about
President Joe Biden’s
troubled son, who is
being investigated for several crimes
.
The whistleblower’s lawyer, Mark Lytle, sent a letter to the heads of multiple House and Senate committees, telling them his client’s “protected disclosures” lay out “examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.”
HUNTER BIDEN INVESTIGATION INFECTED BY ‘POLITICS’: IRS WHISTLEBLOWER
The IRS agent’s allegations also “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee” and “involve failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case” against Hunter Biden.
It is allegedly up to U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Trump-appointed holdover and the Delaware prosecutor overseeing the case, to decide whether to indict the president’s son. In February 2021, Joe Biden asked all Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys appointed by Trump for their resignations,
with Weiss a rare exception
.
Attorney General Merrick Garland
has
repeatedly vowed to ensure that Weiss would be insulated
from any political interference.
“He has been advised that he should get anything he needs,” Garland said of Weiss during Senate testimony in March. “I have not heard anything from that office that suggests they are not able to do anything that the U.S. attorney wants them to do.”
The whistleblower’s lawyer said the IRS agent has also already made “legally protected disclosures” internally at the IRS, as well as to the Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration and the Department of Justice’s inspector general.
Comer told the Washington Examiner that “it’s clear from our investigation that Hunter and other members of the Biden family engaged in deceptive, shady business schemes to avoid scrutiny as they made millions from foreign adversaries like China” and vowed that his committee “will work to hold accountable anyone in the Biden administration who may be covering up this criminal activity.”
“Political considerations were having an impact on the decision for agents to make investigative steps in the case. And those political considerations are not normally a part of a career investigator’s toolkit,” the IRS whistleblower’s lawyer
told
CBS News, adding, “It really doesn’t come down to his credibility, whether you believe him or not, because the things he’s been through are very well documented in emails and other communications with the Department of Justice.”
Comer
revealed new Biden family financial details
last month after he
obtained them through a subpoena of Hunter Biden associate Rob Walker’s financial records
at Bank of America. The House Oversight chairman found that “from 2015 through 2017, Biden family members and their companies received over $1.3 million in payments” from accounts tied to Walker.
Comer said more than
$1 million was sent in incremental payments
to Hunter Biden, his uncle and Joe Biden’s brother James Biden, and Hallie Biden, the widow of the president’s deceased son Beau Biden with whom Hunter was having a romantic relationship in 2017 following his brother’s death, shortly after Walker received a $3 million wire from a Chinese company called State Energy HK.
Joe Biden
denied these details
, which Comer considers
facts backed by clear evidence
.
Hunter Biden’s legal team had indeed seemingly confirmed, and defended, the payments in a March
statement
.
“Hunter Biden, a private citizen with every right to pursue his own business endeavors, joined several business partners in seeking a joint venture with a privately owned, legitimate energy company in China,” a Hunter Biden spokesman said. The statement did not dispute the amounts that Comer had detailed.
Hunter Biden and his associated businesses also received at least $5 million in payments from Chinese energy conglomerate CEFC China Energy in 2017 and 2018, and since-convicted CEFC deputy Patrick Ho also agreed to pay Hunter Biden a $1 million retainer. Hunter Biden referred to Ho as
“the f***ing spy chief of China”
in a May 2018 voice recording.
Comer also announced in March that the Treasury Department would
finally allow the House Oversight Committee to review
suspicious activity bank reports
generated by Hunter Biden and his associates.
Comer had repeatedly
pushed
Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen
to hand over the suspicious bank reports linked to
Biden family businesses
.
The Treasury Department only relented after he threatened to
schedule a public hearing focused on Yellen’s intransigence
and after he ordered a
now-postponed transcribed interview
with Treasury Department Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Jonathan Davidson.
Republicans have long contended that Hunter Biden’s
lucrative business dealings in Ukraine and China
indicate he
may have committed crimes related to foreign lobbying or money laundering
, although recent reports have indicated federal investigators may have narrowed the focus to Hunter Biden’s possibly committing tax fraud in 2016 and 2017 and lying on a federal form when purchasing a handgun in 2018.
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“Based on recent protected disclosures to my office, the FBI has within its possession significant, impactful, and voluminous evidence with respect to potential criminal conduct by Hunter Biden,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) said in an October 2022 letter to Garland, Weiss, and FBI Director Christopher Wray.
Those whistleblower allegations relate to the duo’s dealings with CEFC, as well as to Hunter Biden’s work for Ukrainian energy giant Burisma.
