Twelve Days of WEX-mas: Impeachment inquiry becomes 2024 lightning rod

In the spirit of the season, the Washington Examiner has identified 12 issues we believe will shape 2024 — and beyond. These close-up examinations of agenda-setting issues cover everything from the ongoing battle between the Biden family’s business deals and Republican Oversight, the emergence of a “new world order,” and fights over redistricting and new election maps. Part One is about the Biden impeachment investigation. 

Parallel investigations involving President Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden, and the Department of Justice’s handling of allegations involving them both are likely to offer ammunition to Republicans and cause headaches for Democrats heading into 2024.

The House impeachment inquiry, newly formalized with a vote in December, will proceed along two tracks.

JAMES BIDEN RECEIVED $600,000 AFTER PROMISING POLITICAL FAVORS, WITNESS TESTIFIES

In the House Judiciary Committee, lawmakers will dig deeper into the DOJ’s yearslong investigation into Hunter Biden to vet claims made by two IRS whistleblowers who say that the department extended the first son preferential treatment. Republicans have tied these claims to impeachment because, they say, the Biden administration could have obstructed federal investigators from pursuing lines of inquiry into Hunter Biden that might have implicated Joe Biden.

And in the House Oversight Committee, lawmakers will focus on the web of foreign business deals struck by Hunter Biden and, to a lesser extent, his uncle James Biden while Joe Biden served as vice president and in the years that followed. They will also sift through thousands of pages of financial records for Biden family members and their associates in search of further evidence connecting Joe Biden to the business operations.

The House Judiciary Committee, in coordination with the House Ways and Means Committee, which has jurisdiction over IRS matters, has led closed-door interviews of several officials who have come into contact with the Hunter Biden case at some point or another since the start of the criminal investigation into the first son in 2018.

Their testimonies have largely corroborated the IRS whistleblowers’ accounts of how the investigation unfolded, according to hundreds of pages of transcripts reviewed by the Washington Examiner. However, some witnesses have offered different interpretations of events that transpired during the investigation, with some denying that political bias guided any of the decisions cited as problematic by the whistleblowers.

The committee interviewed U.S. attorneys from Washington, D.C., and California, both of whom confirmed that they declined to partner with special counsel David Weiss when he was working as the U.S. attorney in Delaware and seeking to pursue charges against Hunter Biden in their jurisdictions. Both also said, however, that they did not believe their decisions had any impact on Weiss’s ability to bring charges.

Among several interviews with IRS, DOJ, and FBI officials on the case, the committee interviewed a longtime senior DOJ Tax Division official, who confirmed that the division had a crucial role in approving tax-related charges that prosecutors wanted to bring against Hunter Biden. His testimony underscored that Weiss was not working in a vacuum and that other officials had decision-making abilities in the case.

(AP Photos)

Republicans have zeroed in on the question of what authority Weiss had to prosecute Hunter Biden because the whistleblowers’ testimony did not appear consistent with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s repeated assurances that Weiss, not anyone else at DOJ, had “ultimate authority” over the case.

The committee also interviewed Weiss, a remarkable arrangement because it was the first instance in DOJ history of a special counsel testifying to Congress about a case while it was still open. Lawmakers from both parties grilled Weiss about his level of authority in the case.

Weiss’s control over the investigation became such a point of contention this year because all signs from these interviews pointed to a behind-the-scenes shift in 2022 away from what was initially a unanimous sentiment that investigators and prosecutors wanted to bring charges against Hunter Biden for the 2014 and 2015 tax years.

Republicans suspect that DOJ political appointees and Democrat-aligned career officials found a way to interfere with the case, particularly during that 2022 time frame, with the intention of protecting Joe Biden.

But House Judiciary Committee Republicans have not yet spoken with every target on their witness list as they dig into allegations of bias and political obstruction in the DOJ.

Two other witnesses who could provide information about the allegations are Jack Morgan and Mark Daly, who work within the DOJ’s Tax Division.

Republicans plan to sue them in the coming weeks to force their testimony after they subpoenaed the pair to no avail.

The hurdle they have faced with Morgan and Daly is emblematic of the larger challenge the Judiciary Committee has had with extracting information from the DOJ about its Hunter Biden case. The department says it has a policy that it cannot speak about open investigations, but lawmakers routinely challenge that notion.

Regardless of what hard evidence they uncover, in the eyes of the public, Republicans have the wind at their backs as they investigate claims of DOJ malfeasance because the leading 2024 Republican candidate claims the DOJ is corrupt on a near-daily basis. Former President Donald Trump, twice indicted by the department, has thrived on the campaign trail while hyping up what he describes as political persecution against him.

Any evidence that the DOJ showed caution and deference in the Hunter Biden case, while pursuing Trump swiftly and aggressively, has become part of Trump’s argument.

Meanwhile, the second track of the impeachment process could create even more complications for Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.

The House Oversight Committee’s piece of the impeachment inquiry has produced the closest thing to direct evidence of Joe Biden’s involvement in the family business, although critics of the committee’s work have said the investigation has not yet established a clear link.

Congressional investigators uncovered wire transfers from 2019 on which a Chinese company sending payments to Hunter Biden listed Joe Biden’s home address.

They found a check showing James Biden paid Joe Biden $200,000 on the same day in 2018 that James Biden received a payout from a company he worked for, which later sued him. A $40,000 check from James Biden’s wife, Sara, to Joe Biden would later follow a cash infusion from a Chinese company to Hunter and James Biden, the committee found.

And in early December, congressional investigators unearthed what they said were documents showing monthly transfers of more than $1,000 from Hunter Biden’s business account to Joe Biden’s bank account, also dating back to 2018.

But Democrats have said none of the records, which the committee obtained through subpoenas to banks, prove the Republicans’ theory of the case.

The White House has said the payments to Joe Biden from family members were loan repayments, Democrats note. In at least two cases, the White House or Democrats have circulated documents to support the claim that Hunter and James Biden were simply sending money they owed Joe Biden.

Democrats also argue there’s no evidence Joe Biden had involvement in the private business deals that supplied Hunter and James Biden with the funds to pay him, although some emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop and witness testimony contradict that.

Still, even some Republicans have conceded that they have no smoking gun to show for their months of investigation.

That means the Oversight Committee portion of the impeachment process could become much more significant heading into 2024 as GOP lawmakers seek to convince voters that the frenzy around the Biden family business has been worth it.

The Oversight Committee has issued subpoenas for a handful of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, including Eric Schwerin, who for years helped Hunter Biden manage his financial affairs, and Mervyn Yan, an executive at one of the Chinese companies Hunter Biden received income from.

Republicans have also expressed interest in interviewing George Berges, the owner of the art gallery that, according to leaked paperwork, sold a pricey piece of Hunter Biden’s art to a major Joe Biden donor.

Oversight Republicans have worked to fit details from their findings into a broader narrative of Biden family corruption to varying degrees of success.

But they’ve also struggled to confront more recent efforts by Hunter Biden to highlight the personal pain of his past, including his yearslong battle with drug addiction. The first son’s story of loss and recovery has resonated with many voters, putting Republicans at risk of appearing too aggressive when going after Hunter Biden’s conduct during those years.

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Trump’s campaign considered Hunter Biden’s substance abuse largely off limits during the 2020 race, according to a new book, and House Republicans appear to be following that lead, rarely mentioning the issue and sidestepping questions about it when asked.

For Joe Biden, the 2024 race could force a reckoning with the statements he made about his son’s business dealings starting in 2019. The president repeatedly claimed to have never had so much as a conversation with Hunter Biden about business; evidence uncovered by the House Oversight Committee so far seemingly led to a revision in Joe Biden’s talking points about the controversy. The president now claims he was never “in business” with his son and no longer denies having discussed business with Hunter Biden.