Kevin Morris, a confidant of Hunter Biden, is set to testify in a closed-door interview on Thursday morning as part of the Republican-led impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, according to two sources familiar with the interview.
Morris will meet with lawmakers and attorneys on the House Oversight and Judiciary committees for what is expected to be a lengthy day of questioning. The California-based entertainment lawyer will be grilled on a wide range of topics, likely including payments he made to Hunter Biden, purchases of Hunter Biden’s art, and his knowledge of the first son’s plans to defy congressional subpoenas.
Republicans have shown a particular interest in claims made by two IRS whistleblowers that Morris paid off about $2 million of Hunter Biden’s outstanding taxes in 2020, the same year then-candidate Joe Biden was in the throes of a presidential campaign.
The House Ways and Means Committee found last year through the whistleblowers that federal investigators examining Hunter Biden’s tax activity had weighed whether Morris’s tax payoff could have been a campaign finance violation at the time because the amount far exceeded the legal donor limit.
Morris is a prominent Democratic donor who significantly boosted Joe Biden in 2020, according to federal election data.
But the payments in question are the ones Morris made to Hunter Biden, who was not running for office. The committee revealed an email Morris wrote to a Biden family accountant in February 2020 in reference to the first son’s taxes, saying, “We are under considerable risk personally and politically to get the returns in.”
The committee noted how this email appeared to tie the payment to Joe Biden’s campaign and that it therefore could have amounted to an unreported donation. It may have been a “serious campaign finance” crime, the committee said.
The Department of Justice, which has since brought nine tax charges against Hunter Biden, has not, at this stage, brought any campaign finance violations against Morris or the first son.
In addition to Morris, Republicans have scheduled closed-door interviews with several of the Biden family’s business associates to take place in the coming weeks, according to the two sources familiar with the interview schedule.
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Business associates Mervyn Yan and Rob Walker will appear next week, and Eric Schwerin, who has already appeared once, will come in for a second interview the following week, the sources said.
Republicans are still working to finalize interviews with two of their top witnesses, Hunter Biden and James Biden, the president’s brother.