The House Ways and Means Committee has uncovered documents that appear to suggest that a high-ranking Justice Department official repeatedly shielded President Joe Biden and others from legal exposure during the probe into Hunter Biden.
IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler provided the documents to the committee. Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) claimed that the documents “corroborate [Shapley’s and Ziegler’s] initial testimony to the Committee and reinforce their credibility and their high esteem among colleagues,” reported Fox News.
The Ways and Means Committee, along with the House Oversight and House Judiciary Committees, have been tasked by Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) with leading an impeachment inquiry into President Biden.
Members of the Ways and Means Committee voted to release the documents in order to show there was a possible cover-up that began before Biden took office and continued into his term.
“The Biden Administration — including top officials at the Justice Department — lied to the American public and engaged in a cover-up that interfered with federal investigators and protected the Biden family, including President Biden himself,” the committee said, per Fox News.
According to Shapley and Ziegler, Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf repeatedly informed investigators that President Biden was off limits.
One of the documents released was an August 2020 email from Wolf in which she ordered investigators to remove any reference to “Political Figure 1” from a search warrant. According to Fox News, another released document identified Political Figure 1 as “Former Vice President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr.”
“As a priority, someone needs to redraft attachment B,” Wolf wrote in the email, per Fox News. “I am not sure what this is cut and pasted from but other than the attribution location, and identity stuff at the end, none of it is appropriate and within the scope of this warrant.”
Wolf then allegedly made it clear that Biden was considered outside the scope of a Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) investigation, writing, “Please focus on FARA evidence only. There should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here.”
The committee claimed the documents show that during an interview with President Biden’s brother James in 2022, investigators were “not allowed to ask if then-Vice President Biden was involved in Hunter Biden’s deal with CEFC China Energy” or follow “normal investigative leads.”
According to the committee, President Biden was not the only person federal law enforcement was allegedly forbidden from investigating.
Investigators claimed in a May 2021 report that they were “not allowed to follow investigative leads on potential campaign finance violations related to a wealthy Hollywood lawyer, Kevin Morris, who was enlisted to help the [Biden] family, and who paid millions of dollars to help Hunter around the time that Joe Biden becomes president,” said the committee, according to Fox News.
The committee added, “Investigators wrote that ‘there may be campaign finance criminal violations. AUSA Wolf stated on the last prosecution team meeting that she did not want any of the agents to look into the allegation.’”
As the first impeachment inquiry hearings began on Thursday, Democrats wasted little time claiming that the Republicans had no evidence that President Biden committed a crime.
During the Oversight Committee’s panel, ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) berated the Republican-controlled House for what he considered baseless accusations against the president instigated by former President Donald Trump.
“What counts is what Donald Trump wants. … [T]he majority sits completely empty-handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing. No smoking gun. No gun, no smoke,” said Raskin.
Despite Raskin’s claims, Chairman Smith said the evidence his committee has seen shows “a pattern of Hunter Biden creating for-profit entities to shield at least $20 million from foreign sources from taxes and hide the trail of payments that led to members of the Biden family,” per Fox News.
The committee believes the Biden family received more than $24 million from foreign sources between 2014 and 2019.
