This week in the House, I supported a resolution empowering a full inquiry into President Biden’s interactions with his family’s foreign business dealings. Records obtained by the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability reveal the Biden family and their business associates have received over $20 million in payments from entities in foreign countries including Russia, China, and Ukraine dating back to 2013. The payments, alongside President Biden’s official actions and use of alias email addresses during his time as Vice President and possible efforts by his administration to disrupt criminal investigations into his son Hunter, demand further investigation and oversight empowered by this resolution.
While this week’s vote did not initiate articles of impeachment, formalizing an inquiry was necessary because of the Biden administration’s obstruction of our congressional investigations. House committees of jurisdiction have sought to follow the facts; however, President Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) has refused to allow two attorneys to testify before the Judiciary Committee, and the White House has stated it will not comply with congressional subpoenas or interview requests without a formal vote. The House’s approval of the impeachment inquiry asserts congressional authority – ultimately improving House committees’ ability to utilize the judicial system to compel testimony and document production as they work to uncover the truth.
For months now President Biden has denied knowledge of and involvement in his son Hunter’s dealings with foreign companies. This simply does not hold true in light of the evidence. Among the most concerning facts is Hunter Biden’s 2014 appointment to a position for which he had no qualifications on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Records show Burisma executives worked with Hunter to lobby U.S. officials for help as the company faced a fraud investigation by a Ukrainian government prosecutor. Then, in 2015, then Vice President Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine and gave a speech attacking the prosecutor and conditioning delivery of $1 billion in International Monetary Fund (IMF) loans sought by Ukraine upon his firing. The prosecutor was fired in February of 2016.
According to a report by Senators Ron Johnson and Chuck Grassley, in 2014, then-Vice President Biden also had dinner with a Russian oligarch who wired $3.5 million to one of Hunter Biden’s companies. The very same oligarch was conspicuously absent from the Biden administration’s list of sanctions placed on Russian oligarchs following Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
The Ways and Means Committee plays an important investigative role because our chairman has authority, unique in the House, to direct the review of confidential taxpayer information for the purpose of oversight. When two whistleblowers raised the alarm about IRS and DOJ obstruction of the federal investigation into the Biden family’s suspicious activity, our committee received their testimony under this authority. Through our work, we learned the Biden administration has stonewalled the investigation into Hunter Biden’s likely failure to pay taxes and allowed the statute of limitations to lapse for tax years 2014-15—the years of Hunter’s income from Burisma. Our work also played a key role in exposing the failed plea deal for Hunter which would have potentially granted him immunity from other possible charges, not just the initially revealed tax and gun charges.
Despite his claims the growing evidence against him is false, Hunter Biden this week refused to comply with a subpoena to sit for a deposition with the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees. Instead, he stated he would only sit for a public committee hearing, a venue far less suitable than a deposition for testifying in detail.
So far, the evidence shows Joe Biden has repeatedly misled the American people about his knowledge of his son’s suspect business dealings, and that his family has funneled millions of dollars through an extensive series of shell businesses which appear designed to hide the money trail. As more chilling allegations continue to come to light, the involvement and benefit to the president himself is becoming increasingly clear.
If the benefits received by Joe Biden or his family from foreign interests have impacted his policy and/or conduct as vice president or president, we owe it to the American people to get to the bottom of it.