THE FAMILY'S 'ONLY ASSET'

How Hunter monetized ‘Big Guy’

First Son Hunter Biden apparently referred to his father, President Biden, as “my family’s only asset” while discussing his overseas business ventures in June 2017, according to new IRS whistleblower documents released Wednesday by the House Ways and Means Committee.

Committee chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) told reporters that Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler had furnished the panel with more than 700 pages of additional messages, emails and documents about their five-year investigation of Hunter, now 53.

The evidence dump came hours before the House Oversight Committee holds its first public hearing in the impeachment inquiry of Joe Biden, which was ordered Sept. 12 by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

The disclosures included a June 6, 2017, text message from Hunter in which he appears to acknowledge that his foreign interests were undertaken only to promote his “family’s brand.”

“It’s plane [sic] f--king English. Why in gods [sic] name would I give this marginal bully the keys [to] my family’s only asset?” Hunter vented to a business associate identified only as “James” — likely James Gilliar, who had received just over $1 million months earlier from another Biden family associate, Rob Walker.

Raking in $20 million

Hunter’s efforts, Smith said, resulted in the Biden family raking in at least $20 million from entities in at least seven countries, on which the first son evaded tax payments.

At the same time, the president was aware of his son’s business and crossed paths with several of Hunter’s associates in meetings and phone calls, Smith added.

“These documents show a clearer connection between Joe Biden, his public office, and Hunter Biden’s global influencepeddling scheme that resulted in over $20 million in payments to the Biden family,” he said.

“In addition to then Vice-President Joe Biden attending lunches and speaking on the phone with his son’s business associates, the details released today paint a fuller picture of how Joe Biden’s vicepresidential office was instrumental to the Biden family’s business schemes.

“The evidence 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,” Smith went on. “The growing body of evidence further calls into question the Justice Department’s attempted sweetheart plea deal for Hunter Biden, and the reasons for appointing the architect of that plea deal as the special counsel for Hunter Biden’s case, in light of officials’ efforts to protect President Biden and his son.”

Shapley and Ziegler went to the Ways and Means Committee this past spring with claims that the DOJ had interfered in the probe of the first son, who is scheduled to appear in Delaware federal court Oct. 3 to answer to gun charges — but has so far avoided further indictments initially sought by IRS tax investigators, including for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).

“IRS investigators provided worksheets they compiled as part of their investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax crimes, which connect his business activities to official government activity while Joe Biden served as vice president,” Smith told reporters.

In one email released Wednesday, then-Delaware Assistant US Attorney Lesley Wolf told a group of investigators — including Ziegler — that then-presidential candidate Joe Biden was outside the “scope” of their probe and “[t]here should be nothing” about him included.

“Please focus on FARA evidence only,” Wolf wrote in her Aug. 7, 2020, response to a draft search warrant — three months before the 2020 presidential election.

Shapley also took note of one DOJ official saying they were not “personally interested” in a May 2021 report compiled by tax investigators that noted potential “campaign finance criminal violations” related to Hunter’s “sugar brother” attorney Kevin Morris, who had helped the first son pay off more than $2 million in tax liabilities.

In another email, a CNN producer told IRS investigators in September 2021 that he received an email from Hunter in which the first son said he had expected all his troubles to vanish once his father became president.

‘Influence peddling’

“This file makes it abundantly clear that IRS investigators were concerned there was in fact a connection between Hunter Biden’s global influence peddling, Joe Biden and official US government activity,” according to Smith.

Other disclosures show Democratic lobbying firm Blue Star Strategies gave then-VP Biden talking points ahead of a December 2015 meeting with Ukrainian officials.

That memo was also shared with Hunter, his partners at Rosemont Seneca — Eric Schwerin and Devon Archer — and Burisma owner Vadym Pozharskyi.

The lobbying firm had informed Burisma executives in a proposal that as part of its services it would “educate key officials in Washington, DC, followed by a trip to Kyiv proposed for mid-December 2015.”

Blue Star Strategies also said it would “promote” the “closure” of an investigation into Burisma by Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin.

Pozharskyi in a November 2015 email thread to Hunter Biden and Archer expressed concern that the proposal did not “offer any names of top US officials here in Ukraine,” such as the US ambassador, as “targets for improving Nikolay’s case,” referring to the founder of Burisma, Mykola Zlochevsky.