Hunter Biden’s friend, the entertainment lawyer Kevin Morris, has told House impeachment investigators that he got no favors from President Biden after helping the first son pay off around $5 million in unpaid taxes. Republicans have accused the California attorney of being a part of the Biden family’s “influence-peddling scheme” by loaning money to the first son. 

“I would assume they would want to move as quickly as possible away from today’s testimony,” the top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, Congressman Jamie Raskin, tells the Sun. “It was embarrassing.”

The chairman of the committee, Congressman James Comer, says that the fact Mr. Morris paid off the tax debt at all is evidence of corruption. “Joe Biden had a problem going into the [2020] election and then his son meets Kevin Morris and all of a sudden the debt is gone,” Mr. Comer says. 

The New York Times reported that Messrs. Morris and Biden met at a fundraiser for the latter’s father ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign. Mr. Morris, who became personal friends with Mr. Biden, has helped pay for the first son’s lifestyle, including by loaning him his private jet to travel to court for his paternity suit with a former stripper, settling his more than $5 million tax debt, and paying his rent in ritzy Malibu, California. 

Mr. Morris made his millions as a lawyer for entertainers like the creators of the show “South Park,” Ellen DeGeneres, and Chris Rock, among other big names. He first came under media scrutiny when it was disclosed that he had been loaning his private jet to the younger Mr. Biden while the first son was in the middle of a paternity dispute with a former adult dancer, Lunden Roberts. 

According to testimony given by Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers to the Oversight Committee, Mr. Morris paid off Mr. Biden’s tax debts to the IRS, which totaled more than $5 million after he failed to pay personal income tax from his overseas business deals and his decision to claim personal expenses — such as his daughter’s school tuition and a vacation to a chateau the south of France where, according to his memoir, he “learned to cook crack” — as deductible business expenses. 

In 2021 — after he had been the subject of relentless attacks from Republicans and speculation from the media — Mr. Biden moved to Southern California with his second wife, Melissa Cohen, and their young son, Beau. At the time, Mr. Morris was bankrolling the family by paying their $17,000 per month rent for a house in Malibu. “Just call my friend Kevin Morris,” Mr. Biden wrote to his landlord when he was asked about the rent, according to text messages reviewed by CBS News. 

According to testimony by Hunter Biden’s art dealer, George Bergès, Mr. Morris spent $875,000 on 11 of paintings created by Mr. Biden.

Mr. Morris’ face was recently plastered on every cable news outlet in America after he made a dramatic and unexpected appearance alongside Mr. Biden and his attorney, Abbe Lowell, at an Oversight Committee meeting where members were debating the prospect of holding the first son in contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena. 

Messrs. Morris and Biden, along with the first son’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, strode into the hearing room without warning and sat silently in the audience as Mr. Comer refused requests from Democrats to swear in Mr. Biden to immediately give public testimony — which he insisted he would do before telling investigators he would eventually comply with the subpoena. 

Mr. Morris’s drug use has been raised as an issue by Stephen Miller, the former Trump advisor, whose group America First Legal this week filed a misconduct complaint against Mr. Morris with the California bar. Mr. Miller’s complaint alleges that Mr. Morris is effectively serving as Mr. Biden’s lawyer while also bankrolling his lifestyle, which is an ethics violation in the state bar. 

Mr. Miller also pointed out that Mr. Morris was photographed smoking a bong on his balcony when Mr. Biden, a drug addict in recovery, was inside. Using narcotics, even marijuana, in the presence of an addict is considered dangerous as it threatens his or her recovery.