The Delaware U.S. attorney’s office took several steps to block an FBI inquiry into foreign lobbying violations involving then-Vice President Joe Biden, according to newly released documents from a pair of IRS whistleblowers.
The House Ways and Means Committee made public Wednesday hundreds of pages of emails and other documents related to the IRS and FBI investigation into tax fraud and gun charges involving President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
The documents include a WhatsApp message to Hunter Biden from the president’s brother, James Biden, who, in an apparent reference to a business deal, writes, “I can work with your father alone!! We as usual just need several months of his help for this to work.”
The documents include other emails and memos that appear to tie then-Vice President Biden to his son’s foreign business deals and also provide an inside look at the efforts of Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf to shield Mr. Biden from any part of the criminal investigation, including issuing an order to strip a reference to Mr. Biden from a search warrant while he was running for president.
“These documents show a clearer connection between Joe Biden, his public office, and Hunter Biden’s global influence-peddling scheme that resulted in over $20 million in payments to the Biden family,” House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, Missouri Republican, said.
The tax-writing panel released the documents one day before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee is scheduled to hold the first hearing of its impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden over allegations he used the vice presidency to enrich his family through hugely profitable foreign business deals secured by his son and business associates.
Some of the exhibits released Wednesday were derived from an electronic search warrant served on Hunter Biden’s Google email account. One email referred to notes of a conference call the White House hosted about then-Vice President Biden’s upcoming trip to Ukraine in December 2015. The notes about the upcoming trip were shared with Hunter Biden, his business associate, Devon Archer, and Vadym Pozharskyi, a top official at the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings, which at the time was paying Hunter Biden $1 million a year to serve on its board.
Mr. Pozharskyi and Burisma CEO Mykola Zlochevky at that time had pressured Hunter Biden to enlist the help of his father to thwart a corruption probe. Mr. Biden went on to force then-Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin.
A later email from ex-business associate Eric Schwerin’s account refers to a letter about Burisma that was “to be hand delivered” to Mr. Shokin’s replacement, Yuriy Lutsenko, warning him against investigating Burisma.
IRS and FBI agents sought to investigate Hunter Biden over foreign lobbying violations, leading them to seek a search warrant.
In August 2020, Ms. Wolf responded that “there should be nothing about Political Figure 1 in here,” a reference to Mr. Biden, who was then the Democratic nominee for president.
