The House Ways and Means Committee will vote this morning to release information on how the federal government handled the Hunter Biden investigation, one day ahead of the House Oversight Committee’s first impeachment inquiry hearing.
This is the latest effort from House Republicans to probe all facets of Hunter Biden’s business dealings as they attempt to uncover wrongdoing on the part of President Joe Biden. To date, GOP investigators haven’t found any concrete evidence of wrongdoing by the president.
What to expect: Ways and Means Republicans are set to push out more documents provided by IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler following the meeting. The whistleblowers have claimed that their investigation of Hunter Biden’s tax crimes was slowwalked by the Justice Department.
Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said in a statement that the documents will be “vital to understanding efforts by top officials to protect Joe Biden.”
When Shapley and Ziegler testified before Oversight in July, they were limited in some of their responses due to regulations restricting disclosure of an individual’s tax details. The Ways and Means Committee will vote to lift these restrictions this morning.
The information gleaned from the disclosure will almost certainly be used by Oversight Republicans in their impeachment inquiry kickoff hearing on Thursday. It’s a sign of how interconnected the three panels running the inquiry — Oversight, Ways and Means and Judiciary — are.
Democrats’ view: In an opening statement, Rep. Richie Neal (D-Mass.) — the panel’s top Democrat — will blast the documents under consideration as “cherry-picked” and will say they “came to the committee heavily redacted by Shapley and Ziegler.”
Neal will also take a shot at Smith for fundraising off of his role in the impeachment inquiry, according to excerpts shared with us.
“As a point of personal privilege, I never once sent a fundraising email or even raised a dollar off our work investigating the IRS’s handling of the former president’s taxes,” Neal will say.
Oversight Committee updates: Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) told us the panel plans on holding a dedicated hearing on the Biden family’s business relationship with China in mid-October.
On Tuesday, Comer said bank wires he subpoenaed showed Hunter Biden received $260,000 from Chinese businessman Jonathan Li in 2019.
Democrats, meanwhile, claim the payment isn’t evidence of any wrongdoing. The address listed on the wires was Joe Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence, where Hunter was residing at the time.
— Max Cohen and John Bresnahan
