House GOP to hear additional witness testimony from Hunter Biden business partners amid impeachment inquiry
Fox News
House Republicans plan to hear testimony from several additional witnesses who did business with Hunter Biden this week as part of the ongoing impeachment inquiry against President Biden.
First up this week is Eric Schwerin, who is scheduled to appear on Tuesday after being subpoenaed last year by the House Oversight Committee for a deposition. The committee obtained bank records indicating Schwerin “had access to bank accounts” that could be relevant to their probe.
Schwerin’s testimony comes after Fox News Digital first reported that Joe Biden, as vice president, used email aliases and private email addresses to communicate with Hunter Biden and his business associates hundreds of times – including with Schwerin. The communications came between 2010 to 2019, with the majority of email traffic taking place while Biden was serving as vice president.
BIDEN WAS IN DIRECT CONTACT WITH HUNTER’S BUSINESS PARTNERS USING EMAIL ALIAS AS VP
The House Ways & Means Committee, which is co-leading the impeachment inquiry alongside the Oversight and Judiciary Committees, said 54 of those emails were “exclusively” between Joe Biden and Schwerin. The House Ways & Means Committee describes Schwerin as “the architect of the Biden family’s shell companies.”
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.
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.
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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.
Meanwhile, the data shows direct emails between Schwerin and then-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.
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.
Meanwhile, the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees are also expected to hear testimony from Joey Langston on Wednesday.
Langston is said to have hosted fundraisers for Joe Biden and to have donated thousands of dollars to his political campaigns.
The committee says Langston, in 2008, pleaded guilty to participating in a conspiracy to attempt to influence a judge by providing the judge with “favorable consideration” for a federal judgeship. Langston was sentenced to three years in federal prison and fined $250,000. The Mississippi state bar then disbarred him from practicing law, and in 2016, a federal judge denied his requests to have his “conviction for conspiring to bribe a judge thrown out,” and to have his “record cleared.”
But the House Oversight Committee says it obtained bank records revealing that after Langston lost his appeal, his company, Langston Law Firm Consulting Inc., began making payments, totaling more than $200,000 to James and Sara Biden directly, and to their entity Lion Hall Group.
The committee says it is “interested in the nature and purpose of these payments, which totaled $187,000 while Joe Biden was serving as vice president.”
House Republicans hope the witnesses can provide information on whether, among other things, Joe Biden, as vice president and/or president “took any official action or effected any change in government policy because of money or other things of value provided to himself or his family, including whether concerns that Chinese sources may release additional evidence about their business relationships with the Biden family have had any impact on official acts performed by President Biden or U.S. foreign policy; abused his office of public trust by providing foreign interests with access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him; or abused his office of public trust by knowingly participating in a scheme to enrich himself or his family by giving foreign interests the impression that they would receive access to him and his office in exchange for payments to his family or him.”
The expected testimonies come days after Hunter Biden business associates Mervyn Yan and Rob Walker appeared for their transcribed interviews before the committees, and weeks before the first son is set to take part in a closed-door deposition.
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Hunter Biden defied his subpoena to appear for a deposition on Dec. 13, and was at risk of being held in contempt of Congress.
His attorneys and the committees came to an agreement last week that the first son will appear for a closed-door deposition on Feb. 28.
House Democrats, though, have blasted the impeachment inquiry, and have said witness testimony has not supported Republicans’ claims that Biden benefited from or was involved in his son’s business dealings. House Democrats are calling for the inquiry to come to an end.