The Republican-led House of Representatives subcommittee investigating whether to impeach President Joe Biden released a long-awaited report on its findings Monday morning, alleging Biden committed impeachment and deferring to the full House whether to proceed with formal impeachment.
The nearly 300-page report summarizes an investigation by the House Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means committees over the past year and a half, almost all of which has already been made public.
It alleges that Biden enriched himself through his family’s business ventures and concealed misconduct in office with classified information that was the subject of an investigation by special counsel Robert Hur. declined to press charges this year.
In addition, the committees say the Justice Department mishandled its investigation into his son Hunter Biden’s tax problems and withheld key documents and witnesses from the White House impeachment inquiry.
“The totality of the corruption found by the committees is terrible. President Joe Biden conspired to commit influence peddling and fraud. In doing so, he abused his position and repeatedly lied about his abuse of power and deceived the United States in order to enrich his family.”
The White House has yet to comment on this article.
The report itself provides extensive details about interactions and payments with foreign companies to Hunter Biden and the president’s brother James Biden and their business associates at the end of his term as vice president and during his time as a private citizen.
According to the bank documents obtained by the investigators, the total amount was 27 million dollars. But investigators found no evidence that Biden himself received money from these companies or was involved in foreign business deals, suggesting that Hunter Biden called or saw foreign business associates on speakerphone to make pleasantries while he was with them. son’s birthday dinner.
One example cited by the committees is the case of Russian businesswoman Yelena Baturina, wife of former Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, investing $3.5 million with Hunter Biden’s business partner Devon Archer in 2014 through a company with some ties to Hunter Biden. the investment was completed after Hunter Biden’s birthday dinner at Café Milano in Washington, D.C., attended by Baturina and attended by then-Vice President Joe Biden. In an interview with the Oversight Committee last year, Archer said the conversation “seems like the world and the weather and then everybody — everybody’s gone.”
Later in the year, when Jason Galanis, another of Hunter Biden’s business partners, was seeking additional investment from Baturina through a stock deal that would benefit Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden called his father and put him on speakerphone, Galanis said. He told the Oversight and Judiciary committees that the brief call included some “good luck, greetings and safe travels,” after which Joe Biden said, “Be good to my son,” before ending the conversation. Although the committees produced an email from Galanis in which Baturina committed to making an additional investment, it does not indicate that this ever happened.
Elsewhere in the report, the committees provide examples of numerous financial deals between Hunter Biden and Chinese corporations, but do not provide evidence of direct ties during Joe Biden’s tenure as vice president or specific policies he changed or promoted during that time. They also cite the example of Sarah Biden, the wife of the president’s brother James, signing a $40,000 check to Biden in 2017 designated as “loan repayment” from an account credited to his account through various transfers from Hunter. Biden’s ties to a Chinese energy company.
The committees also point to examples that describe the future role of Hunter Biden’s associates in certain business ventures for Joe Biden after his term as vice president ends. In testimony before the Oversight and Judiciary committees, Hunter Biden denied his father’s involvement or explained any references he made to his father at the time about drug and alcohol use.
In June, the chairman of the three committees continues the impeachment Sent the crime Recommended to the Justice Department that Hunter and James Biden be charged with perjury to Congress.
Other sections of the report deal with the IRS investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax evasion in 2017 and 2018, which began in 2018 under the Trump administration and continued under the supervision of special counsel David Weiss during the Biden administration. Two IRS employees, as whistleblowers, alleged that the Justice Department was deliberately moving the investigation slowly. Hunter Biden was offered a plea deal on federal firearms charges that collapsed in court last year, and he then convicted on those charges in a jury trial this year. He is awaiting trial for tax evasion later this year.
The report does not mention the role of possible Russian spy Alexander Smirnov false informers To the FBI about Hunter and Joe Biden. Smirnov was also there accused of providing false information Weiss, about the president’s son, is scheduled to be tried in December.
“While the Committees’ fact-finding continues amid President Biden’s obstruction, the evidence uncovered in the impeachment inquiry to date already amounts to impeachable conduct. The committees present this information to the House of Representatives for evaluation and consideration of appropriate next steps,” the report concludes.
It was an impeachment inquiry announced in September Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., then speaker of the House, was formally confirmed by the House in a party-line vote in December.
It is unclear whether the Republican leadership will have enough votes to impeach Biden, and in any case, impeachment would fail to reach the two-thirds bar for conviction in the Senate. Senate Democrats, who hold a 51-49 majority, can vote to reject the impeachment inquiry with a simple majority.