Treasury reports allegedly flagged Hunter’s insurance, opening new line of inquiry in impeachment

As the House Oversight Committee prepares to depose Hunter Biden next month, members of the committee are interested in the many ways that Joe Biden could have received benefits from his son’s business dealings, in addition to the payments the committee traced from Chinese sources to Biden’s bank accounts.

GOP Representative Eric Burlison, who sits on the House Oversight Committee, said on the "Just the News, No Noise" TV show that documents he and the committee have reviewed indicate that there may be yet more methods that Hunter Biden used to pass benefits to his father both while he was Vice President and after he left office.

One thing that caught Rep. Burlison’s eye: Mention of transactions involving whole life insurance policies contained in the Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) that the Treasury Department produced on Hunter Biden.

“Whenever I was reading some of the reports and the suspicious activity reports, I saw transactions that were being sent to whole life insurance policies, which if you if you know much about that, it could be a way to hide money, and to avoid taxes is to is to overly fund a whole life policy,” Burlison said.

A spokesman for Rep. Burlison told Just the News on Friday that these types of transactions are one of the many things that the House Oversight Committee continues to investigate in its impeachment inquiry into the President.

House Republicans voted last month to open a formal impeachment inquiry to obtain new investigative tools that would allow the leading committee’s to probe whether Joe Biden benefited financially or in other ways from his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.

To date, the House Republicans uncovered payment of funds directly to Joe Biden’s bank accounts from his son Hunter and his brother James, some of which the legislators allege came directly from Chinese sources.

In early December, the Oversight Committee released bank records that showed Hunter Biden set up a recurring payment to his father for $1,380 from his Owasco PC business account to his father. At the time, Hunter Biden’s Owasco PC account was receiving payments from Hudson West III, a joint venture set up with executives from CEFC China Energy, Just the News reported. Hunter Biden's lawyers claim that that the monthly $1,380 transfers were made to repay his father for a truck payment that Hunter Biden was unable to finance himself.

The Oversight Committee also previously identified a $40,000 check from James and Sarah Biden—the President’s brother and sister-in-law—to Joe Biden labeled as a “loan repayment.” The committee traced the money from a Chinese company connected to CEFC to Hunter Biden. From there, the money ended up in James Biden’s business account, where Sarah Biden withdrew it and deposited in a personal account. The check was then sent to Joe Biden.

Why the whole life insurance policy Hunter Biden allegedly contributed to according to the SARs is important to the impeachment inquiry relates to the policy’s ability to accumulate a cash value that can be accessed by the policy holder or be borrowed against. The withdrawals also come tax-free up to the value of the premiums paid, according to Investopedia.

What this means is that the policy holder can have contribute more to the life insurance plan than required in order to develop tax-free cash reserves against which he can take out loans. Both Hunter and Joe Biden had life insurance policies according to email records and financial disclosures.

Evidence obtained from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop shows that the younger Biden had at least two life insurance policies beginning in 2011. On December 13, 2011, Hunter Biden’s business partner Eric Schwerin emailed Hunter and his father’s personal attorney Mel Monzack and attached the younger Biden’s two insurance policies. Just the News was not able to open the attachments to see the details of the policies.

In 2017, after Joe Biden left office, Hunter Biden was struggling to balance his expenses in the midst of a divorce from his now ex-wife, Kathleen Biden. During the negotiations, it appears that Hunter Biden was required to sign an agreement that Kathleen would be the “sole irrevocable beneficiary” of Hunter Biden’s life insurance policy.

The emails show that this policy was worth $3 million, though it is unclear whether this policy is a whole life insurance policy, as Congressman Burlison stated was the type of policy mentioned in the SARs.

Another email shows the scope of the monthly premium which Hunter contributed to the policy. In August of that same year, Hunter’s assistant emailed him a list of his outstanding bills, which includes a $9,000 quarterly payment for a life insurance policy, which appeared alongside payments owed to the IRS for failure to pay his taxes. The first son has since been charged with tax violations from 2015 to 2019.

“Due NOW,” Hunter’s secretary wrote. “IRS monthly installment: $10,000, Life Insurance (quarterly payment): $9,000,” the email continues.

Then-Vice President Biden’s financial disclosures, released by the Obama White House, show that he had at least one whole life insurance policy through Mass Mutual.

Biden’s earliest financial disclosure, from 2010, also includes an entry showing he acquired multiple Mass Mutual whole life policies between 1969 and 1983 and took at least one loan against the value of the policies in 1983 for between $15,000 and $50,000.

See then-Vice President Biden’s 2010 financial disclosure below:

The rest of the financial disclosures can be found here.

This loan continues to show up on now-President Biden’s most recent financial disclosures, including those released in 2020, 2021, and 2022. The same value is still listed and it has an open-ended term with between 5-8% interest.

Also found on Biden’s Vice Presidential financial disclosures is a line of credit from Sun National Bank in Biden's home state of Delaware which is present on the 2010 disclosure and appears on all subsequent disclosures until 2015. The entry indicates that Biden co-signed for this line of credit “with son,” according to the disclosures. The line of credit has a value between $15,000 and $50,000.

It is not specified with which son Joe Biden co-signed the line of credit. At the time, Biden had two living sons, Beau Biden—who died from brain cancer in May 2015—and Hunter Biden.

Neither Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s personal attorney, nor the White House responded to a request for comment from Just the News about the life insurance policies found in Hunter Biden’s emails and in President Biden’s financial disclosures.

House Republicans are pushing forward with the impeachment inquiry and are expected to seek more answers on Hunter Biden’s finances to show benefits that his father may have received from his foreign business dealings.

Yesterday, Oversight Chairman James Comer and Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan announced that Hunter Biden would sit for a deposition with their committees on February 28.

Before then, the committee plans to interview at least five other Biden associates and business partners involved in the first son’s overseas ventures, including Eric Schwerin—a longtime partner of Hunter Biden who worked at Rosemont Seneca—and Tony Bobulinski—who was at the center of the Biden family efforts to partner with CEFC China Energy and its chairman Ye Jianming, from whom Hunter received millions of dollars.

Despite this, President Biden has personally criticized the impeachment inquiry as a “baseless political stunt [...] Instead of doing anything to help make Americans’ lives better, they are focused on attacking me with lies,” Biden said last month after House Republicans voted to formalize the inquiry.

Hunter Biden has joined his father in criticizing the inquiry, claiming that his “father was not financially involved in [his] business.” In a public statement in front of the Capitol building after defying the Oversight Committee’s first subpoena, he said that it is his goal to "make sure that the House committee's illegitimate investigations of my family do not proceed on distortions, manipulated evidence and lies.”

Last week, Hunter Biden’s lawyer reversed course, agreeing that his client would sit for a deposition if Chairmen Comer and Jordan reissued their subpoena. Now that Hunter’s deposition is scheduled, the Oversight Committee will likely pursue answers to the unresolved questions about his finances.