Key lawmaker asks oversight committees to probe if DOJ is letting Hunter Biden off easy

An influential lawmaker is asking oversight committees in the House and Senate to investigate whether the Justice Department has let presidential son Hunter Biden off easy in its probe of alleged tax offenses by allowing the statute of limitations to expire on certain transactions a decade ago in Ukraine and elsewhere.

Rep. Scott Perry’s letter this week was prompted by a Just the News report that emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop seized by the FBI in 2019 state the presidential son had been warned in 2017 he failed to declare $400,000 income from his controversial Burisma Holdings job in Ukraine dating to 2014 and owed back taxes.

The letter asked the top Republicans and Democrats on House Ways and Means, Senate Finance, House Judiciary, House Oversight, Senate Homeland Security, Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and Senate Judiciary to demand answers of federal prosecutors, especially now that an IRS whistleblower has come forward with allegations of political interference in the probe.

Perry, R-Pa., is a key voice in the conservative House Freedom Caucus and played a high-profile role in the deal that made Kevin McCarthy House Speaker earlier this year.

He noted that recent news media reports on purported criminal charges being considered against Hunter Biden – who has denied any wrongdoing but acknowledged he was under FBI investigation – seem to involve smaller, more recent transactions and not those referencing the undeclared Burisma income from the 2017 email.

“That reporting has some lawmakers and tax experts concerned that the DOJ knowingly and purposefully allowed the statute of limitations to expire, or that DOJ/IRS constructed an agreement extending the legal deadline - commonly known as "tolling agreements" - specifically to avoid indictment and/or prosecution,” Perry wrote his colleagues in both chambers.

“I respectfully request your respective Committees to inquire with the individuals involved at the DOJ and the IRS on this specific matter to determine if the statute of limitations were allowed to expire or, if a particular tolling agreement in this matter were constructed, who was involved and what the justification were for such actions,” he added.

You can read that letter here:

Perry declared that the “general public and Members of Congress conducting oversight into these matters must know the full details of these proceedings to ensure that the legal/tax system in our country is operating in full transparency and with an even-handed fairness.

​House Oversight and Accountability Committee Chairman James Comer told Just the News last week  there are growing questions in Washington whether the DOJ probe is too narrowly focused on tax transactions from 2018 forward instead of earlier deals dating to 2014 that involved Russia, China and Ukraine.

"Look, his tax problems go back to at least 2014," Comer said. "He owes a lot more in taxes than what I've heard they're wanting to indict him on. At the end of the day, if you look at all the potential charges and all the potential wrongdoing that Hunter Biden has done over the past decade, tax evasion for one or two years is a drop in the bucket. It wouldn't even be in the top five things that I think the DOJ could charge him with.

“This is another example of a two-tier system in justice, of justice in America. This is another example of a privileged Democrat, getting away with things that no average, working, taxpaying American could get away with."

Congressional investigators for two years have had an email to Hunter Biden from close business associate Eric Schwerin, warning that the first son had failed to pay taxes on $400,000 in income he received from the controversial Ukraine energy firm Burisma Holdings all the way back to 2014. The author of that letter, Eric Schwerin, is now cooperating with Comer's probe, according to Comer.

"In 2014 you joined the Burisma board and we still need to amend your 2014 returns to reflect the unreported Burisma income," Schwerin wrote Hunter Biden in the Jan. 16, 2017 email that appeared on a laptop turned over to the FBI and Congress. "That is approximately $400,000 extra so your income in 2014 was closer to $1,247,328."

You can read that email here:

Hunter Biden has acknowledged since December 2020 that he has been under criminal investigation for tax matters, and his representative disclosed last year he paid overdue tax bills totaling $2 million. He has expressed confidence he will be cleared of criminal wrongdoing.