Congressional Republicans Escalate Multiple Investigations Into Hunter Biden, Even as He Hopes To Make His Troubles Vanish With ‘Sweetheart’ Plea Deal

Congressional Republicans are aggressively pushing forward with their probes into Hunter Biden and alleged corruption in the wider Biden family, even as Mr. Biden fils hopes to make his legal troubles disappear in 10 days if a Delaware judge approves his plea agreement, one that Speaker McCarthy has derided as “a sweetheart deal” and an example of a “two-tiered legal system.” House Republicans are planning to speak with key witnesses in coming weeks as they investigate reports of Hunter Biden’s influence peddling and self-dealing, as well as whistleblower accusations that both the first son and his father accepted $5 million bribes from foreign entities while President Biden was vice president.Republican House and Senate investigators are also aggressively probing how the younger Mr. Biden’s “sweetheart” plea deal — under which he agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax evasion and likely avoid prison — came about. Two whistleblowers have alleged that the United States attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, who investigated Mr. Biden, was stymied by political appointees in the Department of Justice and blocked from attaining the special counsel status he needed to widen his investigation. Mr. Weiss has denied he was shut down in a carefully worded letter to Senator Graham. Yet next week, the two whistleblowers will appear before the House Oversight Committee. An Internal Revenue Service investigator, David Shapley, as well as a second, heretofore anonymous whistleblower whose identity will be disclosed will offer rebuttal testimony, testifying that Mr. Weiss did indeed privately complain he did not control his own investigation.Mr. Biden’s attempts at brushing off his legal troubles — including the guilty pleas and the settling of a child support dispute with a former stripper in Arkansas — have not deterred Republicans in their quest for answers. In fact, they appear to have made GOP investigators even more ravenous, especially after a beaming Mr. Biden fils appeared at a state dinner last month alongside Attorney General Garland and other Biden administration officials, later accompanied his father to Camp David, and then appeared alongside his father on the Truman Balcony on July 4 as the president and first lady waved to onlookers.“Damn. He went to a state dinner with Merrick Garland there,” Congresswoman Nancy Mace, a member of the Oversight Committee, told the Washington Examiner. “The president of the United States inviting his son, who’s under investigation, you know, under indictment, plead guilty, whatever, and to go to a state dinner with Merrick Garland, it’s just the optics are terrible. But that’s just kind of true of the administration right now.”Mr. Biden’s legal team, led by the famed lawyer Abbe Lowell, has in recent months taken a more aggressive approach in responding to Republicans who are criticizing the first son. Mr. Biden’s team recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to representatives of President Trump, saying that the former president’s social media posts about the first son’s alleged corruption “are both defamatory and likely to incite Mr. Trump’s followers to take actions against Mr. Biden and which could lead to his or his family’s injury.”Mr. Lowell lists a number of recent threats made against prominent politicians, such as Speaker Pelosi and President Obama, which were made following social media posts from Mr. Trump that criticized the Democratic leaders. “We are just one such social media message away from another incident, and you should make clear to Mr. Trump — if you have not done so already — that Mr. Trump’s words have caused harm in the past and threaten to do so again if he does not stop,” Mr. Lowell continued. In April, Mr. Lowell submitted a complaint to the Office of Congressional Ethics to request an investigation into Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has long derided Mr. Biden in public. The complaint states that “Representative Greene’s unethical conduct arises from her continuous verbal attacks, defamatory statements, publication of personal photos and data, and promotion of conspiracy theories about and against Robert Hunter Biden.” Ms. Greene’s conduct, Mr. Lowell argues, does “reflect the credibility of the House” as defined in an ethics rule written in the late 1960s, and therefore deserves official condemnation. To date, three of the House’s most powerful committees — Oversight, Judiciary, and Ways and Means — have led the GOP investigations into Mr. Biden. The Oversight panel has discovered a raft of bank records and communications that Republicans say point to a corrupt influence-peddling operation. The Judiciary Committee plans to speak with some of the executive branch’s law enforcement officials who were allegedly involved in “slow-walking” the investigation into the first son. In June, the Ways and Means chairman, Congressman Jason Smith, disclosed hundreds of pages of transcripts from interviews with Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who claim the Department of Justice halted prosecutors from seeking felony charges against Mr. Biden. On top of these discoveries and planned testimony, the New York Post reports that senior officials from the DOJ, the IRS, and the Secret Service are all in talks to speak before committees about the whistleblower allegation that Mr. Weiss was denied special counsel status and the ability to seek charges in districts other than his own when he sought approval for such actions from his superiors. The most damning testimony before a congressional panel could come from Mr. Biden’s former business partner, Devon Archer, who for years was deeply involved with the first son’s work in Ukraine. Archer was convicted of securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud in 2018 — a conviction that was upheld by an appellate court earlier this year. Archer was subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee in June. The document stated that members of Congress were seeking information from him because they view Archer “as possessing information relevant to its investigation.”An Oversight Committee source tells the Sun that, as of Friday, Archer’s legal team and committee staff are still trying to find a date for the former Biden family associate to testify. Archer and Mr. Biden served together on the board of Burisma for several years beginning in 2014, for which the future first son was paid $80,000 per month until his father left the vice presidency in 2017. According to a report by the Daily Caller, Archer and Mr. Biden worked to obtain an American visa for Burisma’s founder, Mykola Zlochevsky, as the Ukrainian businessman was under investigation in his home country for corruption. Senator Grassley, who has engaged in a years-long investigation into the first son, has claimed to have access to recordings of phone calls during which Mr. Zlochevsky, the younger Mr. Biden, and his father discussed an alleged bribe that was some claim was paid during the Obama administration.

Congressional Republicans Escalate Multiple Investigations Into Hunter Biden, Even as He Hopes To Make His Troubles Vanish With ‘Sweetheart’ Plea Deal

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