Delay, divulge and deny

For years, Hunter Biden has made headline after headline for everything from his reckless behavior to his involvement in shady business dealings. And at every step of the way, Americans have demanded their leaders look into the many examples of where it seems Hunter Biden has gotten away with committing crimes that would send the average American to jail. On June 22, the Ways and Means Committee, which I'm the chairman of, released a bombshell report that included 14 hours' worth of jaw-dropping testimony from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees who contacted my office to share their serious concerns regarding the federal government's handling of an investigation into Hunter Biden's business dealings.

An $80,000 diamond. A luxury sports car worth over $140,000. And payments worth millions of dollars from business partners in countries such as China and Romania. These are just some of the gifts and payments Hunter Biden received but never reported to the IRS as required by law. It appears that there are a separate set of laws if your last name is Biden or Clinton. The fact that Hunter Biden was never held accountable for the crimes he was accused of isn't the only alarming detail to come out of the whistleblowers' transcript.

In their testimony, the whistleblowers provided strong testimony that the Department of Justice (DOJ) intervened and overstepped in their investigation of the president's son. In one case, they say Hunter Biden's attorneys received a tip that the IRS investigators were planning to request a search warrant to recover evidence located in a storage facility just outside D.C. In another instance, IRS investigators were told by a U.S. attorney that "there is no way" a search warrant for evidence would get approved because the evidence of interest would be found in the guesthouse of then-Vice President Joe Biden. That piece of evidence was an encrypted WhatsApp message where Hunter Biden threatened a Chinese official to pay up, noting that his father — Joe Biden — was sitting right next to him. Interestingly, the president has repeatedly claimed that he has never had any knowledge of his son's business dealings.

After Joe Biden was sworn in as president, there were concerns the DOJ wouldn't be an impartial investigator. And in U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland's testimony before Congress, he promised the American people that the prosecutor handling Hunter Biden's case, U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss, could bring charges against Hunter Biden outside of Delaware. Yet whistleblower testimony suggests that Weiss tried to bring charges in the District of Columbia around March 2022 and was denied. Weiss sought special counsel status from DOJ in the spring of 2022 and was denied. Weiss sought to bring charges in the Central District of California in the fall of 2022 and had that request denied in January 2023.

On the very same day that we released the whistleblowers' transcript, the person accused of committing these crimes — Hunter Biden — and the person who appears to have helped cover them up — Garland — were dining together at the White House. That just goes to show what justice looks like in America under Joe Biden.

One of the first actions I took when I became chairman of the Ways and Means Committee was setting up an IRS whistleblower hotline. That's because Congress has a duty to ask why and to hold agencies accountable and consider appropriate legislative action if the federal government is not treating all Americans equally. It's absolutely unacceptable the scales of justice are being skewed in favor of the wealthy and the politically connected. I will continue fighting tooth and nail to get Americans the answers they deserve and to hold accountable anyone who thinks they are above the law.

Jason Smith (R-MO) represents the eighth congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives.