Fighting to get Americans the answers they deserve

Back in January, just weeks after my colleagues selected me to lead the House Ways and Means Committee, one of the first actions I took was to setup a whistleblower hotline to give IRS personnel a safe and confidential way to share information about misconduct they have witnessed involving the agency. Among the many individuals who reached out to share concerns were two brave IRS employees who provided evidence that became the foundation of House Republicans' impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden.

On Dec. 5, the two IRS whistleblowers came before the committee to share additional evidence. At the end of this seven-hour meeting, the committee voted to publicly release 108 new pages of evidence that paints an even better picture of the Biden family's shady business dealings. On Dec. 7, prosecutors indicted Hunter Biden on nine tax crimes, including three felonies. This indictment confirms that the whistleblowers have been right about this case from the beginning.

President Biden repeatedly said he had no knowledge of his son's business dealings, but we now have data on 327 emails saying otherwise. The documents we released show he didn't just know about his son's business dealings, but he appears to have been intimately involved. The new evidence shows that then-Vice President Biden sent numerous emails using aliases to communicate one-on-one with Eric Schwerin -- Hunter Biden's business partner who helped set up the over 20 shell companies that the Biden family funneled millions of dollars through.

Suspiciously, email traffic between Joe Biden and Schwerin would routinely increase before and after Vice President Biden's various trips to Ukraine. In the days before Biden's June 2014 trip, he and Schwerin exchanged five emails. Before the vice president's November trip back to Ukraine, he and Schwerin emailed an astonishing 27 times. The following year, Vice President Biden threatened the President of Ukraine he would withhold $1 billion in foreign aid if a prosecutor looking into corruption involving Burisma -- the Ukrainian company that Hunter made millions of dollars serving as a member of its board -- wasn't fired. The prosecutor was later fired.

Hundreds of messages from alias emails raise questions of whether Joe Biden was trying to hide the existence and content of these messages. If investigators had not been stonewalled, the IRS investigation into Hunter's tax fraud and business dealings would have naturally laid bare Joe Biden's direct involvement.

Back in September, an IRS whistleblower provided written notes revealing how the Department of Justice discouraged investigators from looking into alleged campaign finance crimes, which stem from a $2 million payment by Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris to cover Hunter Biden's unpaid taxes when Joe Biden was running for president.

According to the new evidence, Morris told a Biden family accountant that the unpaid taxes posed a "considerable risk personally and politically." This $2 million payment occurred in February 2020, just three weeks before the Super Tuesday Democrat primary election. It appears this was an attempt to clear up one of the single biggest political liabilities to the Biden campaign. The new whistleblower testimony also revealed that Morris didn't just cover $2 million in Hunter's unpaid taxes, he also forked over millions for living expenses. In total, we now know Kevin Morris paid at least $4.9 million for Hunter Biden's benefit.

The new evidence makes it clear that Joe Biden lied about not only his knowledge, but seemingly his involvement, in his son's shady business dealings. We have data on hundreds of emails between Joe Biden and Hunter's business associate. We know Biden had phone calls and met with Hunter's business partners; we've also learned that Joe and Hunter Biden used Air Force 2 like a corporate jet, flying around the world to meet with Hunter's business associates in Ukraine and Mexico. As one of the three committee chairman leading the impeachment inquiry, I will continue following the facts and working around the clock to get the American people the answers -- and the accountability -- they deserve.

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