Republicans accuse Biden of hiding income
FOX News' Chad Pergram provides updates on House Republicans' impeachment inquiry against President Biden ahead of congressional testimony from two IRS whistleblowers.
FIRST ON FOX: As vice president, Joe Biden used email aliases and private email addresses to communicate with son Hunter Biden and Hunter's business associates hundreds of times, new records released by the House Ways & Means Committee revealed.
The committee obtained metadata from IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler that reveals Joe Biden used alias email accounts 327 times during a nine-year period — 2010 to 2019 — to correspond with his son, Hunter, and one of Hunter's key business associates, Eric Schwerin, among others.
The majority of the email traffic took place while Biden was vice president.
The committee says 54 of the emails were "exclusively" between Joe Biden and Schwerin, who the committee describes as "the architect of the Biden family’s shell companies."
Joe Biden and son Hunter Biden. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
The email aliases used were "robinware456," "JRBware" and "RobertLPeters."
Earlier this year, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., revealed the existence of Biden's email aliases.
After Comer's release of those aliases, Fox News Digital learned the whistleblowers, who are still employed as IRS investigators, ran a search in their existing files for the Biden email aliases in email exchanges with Hunter Biden and Eric Schwerin. That search led to the revelation of the 327 exchanges.
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A source told Fox News Digital the whistleblowers could only access metadata for these exchanges. The source said accessing the content of the emails would require a search warrant.
The whistleblowers turned over the results of the search to the committee after a closed-door meeting Tuesday, and the committee released the information Tuesday.
Schwerin, who was the former president of Hunter’s Rosemont Seneca Advisors, served as then-Vice President Biden’s "bookkeeper" from 2009 to 2017.
Schwerin, during a March 2023 meeting with the House Oversight Committee staff, explained that "he was not aware of any transactions into or out of the then-Vice President’s bank account related to business conducted by any Biden family member," a spokesperson for the Democrats on the committee told Fox News Digital.
Eric Schwerin (L), Joe Biden (C) and Hunter Biden (R) (Fox News)
The White House has also cited Schwerin's statement that Biden was not involved in his family's business dealings when pushing back against Republicans' impeachment inquiry.
A person familiar with Schwerin's role in handling then-Vice President Biden's finances told Fox News Digital that Schwerin worked on Biden's personal budget and helped coordinate with his tax preparers.
The individual also pointed to the frequency of Schwerin's communications with Biden and his top aides and said it was "inevitable" Rosemont Seneca business came up in conversations.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has subpoenaed Schwerin for a deposition on Nov. 9. The committee is in communication with his attorney to set a date for the deposition.
Meanwhile, the data shows direct emails between Schwerin and Vice President Biden increased during times when the vice president traveled to Ukraine.
The committee said the data shows Joe Biden and Schwerin exchanged five emails in June 2014 before the vice president’s trip to Ukraine that month.
After that trip and before Biden’s November 2014 trip back to Ukraine, he and Schwerin emailed 27 times.
Hunter Biden joined the board of Ukrainian natural gas firm Burisma Holdings in April 2014.
Biden has acknowledged that when he was vice president he successfully pressured Ukraine to fire Ukrainian prosecutor Viktor Shokin. At the time, Shokin was investigating Burisma Holdings during the same period Hunter Biden held a highly lucrative role on the board, receiving thousands of dollars per month.
Supervisory IRS Special Agent Gary Shapley, left, and IRS Criminal Investigator Joseph Ziegler are sworn in to testify during a House Oversight Committee hearing related to the Justice Department's investigation of Hunter Biden. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
At the time, the vice president threatened to withhold $1 billion of critical U.S. aid if Shokin was not fired.
Biden allies maintain the vice president pushed for Shokin's firing due to concerns the Ukrainian prosecutor went easy on corruption and say his firing was the policy position of the U.S. and international community.
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"Vice President Biden appears to have treated Air Force Two like a corporate jet, traveling to Ukraine and Mexico to advance Hunter Biden’s business interests," Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith said. "Evidence from today’s documents show right around the time of international trips like those to Ukraine, Joe Biden was emailing his son and his son’s business partner from private email accounts using aliases while vice president."
Smith, R-Mo., is leading the impeachment inquiry against President Biden alongside House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, and House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky.
House Ways & Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, R-Mo. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
The chairmen are investigating any foreign money received by the Biden family, whether President Biden was involved in his family’s foreign business dealings and steps allegedly taken by the Biden administration to "slow, hamper, or otherwise impede the criminal investigation into the President’s son, Hunter Biden, which involves funds received by the Biden family from foreign sources."
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The White House has blasted the House impeachment inquiry against the president as baseless, maintaining the president was never in business with his son and never spoke to his son about his business dealings.
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The Justice Department and individual DOJ officials have denied whistleblower allegations that suggest politics played a role in prosecutorial decisions throughout the Hunter Biden probe.
Hunter Biden has been subpoenaed by the House Oversight Committee and is expected to appear for a deposition Dec. 13. House Republicans have promised to release the transcript of Hunter Biden's deposition and have vowed to schedule a public hearing so the president's son can testify publicly before the American people as his attorney requested.
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