Democrats claim Biden shady business deals probe is a ‘total bust’ as they ramp up war with Republicans demanding his impeachment over ties to Hunter’s business

• ‘Chairman Comer ’s investigation has conclusively disproven the Republican allegations against President Biden,’ declared Rep. Jamie Raskin
•  Raskin claims the evidence gathered is a ‘total bust—an epic flop in the history of congressional investigations’ meant to distract from Trump ‘s legal woes 
• House Republicans are weighing a formal impeachment inquiry against the president 

By Morgan Phillips, U.S. Political Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Published: 13:40 EDT, 11 September 2023 | Updated: 14:22 EDT, 11 September 2023

Biden laughs at query on handing over bank records amid Hunter probe

By Nikki Schwab, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Updated: 12:32 EDT, 1 September 2023

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Senator Ted Cruz of Texas has called for a Congressional probe over whether to impeach Joe Biden over his son’s messages with Chinese officials.

Cruz, speaking on a podcast, said a string of texts show that Hunter Biden was using his access to his father to win his lucrative business deals abroad.

It comes after the 53-year-old First Son struck a plea deal last week with federal prosecutors in Delaware over tax and firearm offenses.

But GOP bigwig Cruz said Congress should open an investigation into whether the president himself was using his position to line his pockets. 

 ‘Look, this WhatsApp is direct evidence of Joe Biden abusing his government power to enrich his son, and, assuming 10% for the big guy, to enrich himself,’ he said.

‘Remember, this WhatsApp says ‘we want to know.’ This is not just me, Hunter, just mooching off my dad…. Of course the House needs to investigate it,’ the top Republican claimed.

But any idea that an impeachment motion would succeed is far-fetched because the upper house of Congress, the Senate, is currently controlled by the Democrats. 

Conservatives have long claimed that Hunter Biden has been guilty of using his family connections to rake in millions of dollars abroad.

They are investigating his deals in Ukraine and China that they claim were struck thanks to the access he got to his father, who was vice-president under Barack Obama.

In the 2017 WhatsApp message singled out by Cruz, Hunter sent a menacing threat to a Chinese Communist Party official after Joe Biden had left the VP office.

He hinted to Henry Zhao, CEO of Harvest Fund Management, that his father would see to it that he would be punished if he did not comply with the unspecified demand.

‘And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction.’

‘I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father,’ Hunter Biden reportedly said.

The allegations undercut consistent claims from the Biden family and administration that Joe was not involved in his son’s foreign business dealings.

Hunter’s lawyers have insisted the WhatsApp was the ramblings of a troubled man in the midst of a drug addiction.

On Friday, a lawyer for IRS whisteblower Gary Shapley claimed that his attempts to get to the bottom of the WhatsApp story had been rebuffed by prosecutors.

‘The agents wanted to follow up on this and the prosecutors told them not to because, oh, well, maybe Hunter Biden was puffing or something like that,’ said Mark Lytle, Shapley’s attorney.

He told Fox News on Friday: ‘So the agent said, well, let’s get the GPS location of the two of the father and the son, and let’s see if they’re actually in the same room at that time.

On Thursday, the House Ways and Means Committee released testimony from two IRS whistleblowers – including Shapley – who said the Justice Department, FBI and IRS interfered with the investigation of the tax evasion case against Hunter Biden.

Jason Smith, a Republican from Missouri who chairs the committee, claimed that testimony ‘outlines misconduct and government abuse at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the investigation of Hunter Biden.

‘Whistleblowers describe how the Biden Justice Department intervened and overstepped in a campaign to protect the son of Joe Biden by delaying, divulging, and denying an ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes.’

The committee said on Thursday: ‘The allegations point to a steady campaign of: unequal treatment of enforcing tax law; Department of Justice interference in the form of delays, divulgences, and denials, into the investigation of tax crimes that may have been committed by the President’s son; and finally, retaliation against IRS employees who blew the whistle on the misconduct.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer Chris Clark, who negotiated a plea agreement on Hunter’s behalf with the Justice Department, called the whistleblower ‘biased’ and claimed the account covered ‘a time of turmoil and addiction’ for the president’s son.

He also disputed the veracity of Hunter’s claim about now-President Biden in the WhatsApp message, saying his words have ‘no connection to anyone in his family.’

‘An extensive, five-year-long investigation conducted by the United States Department of Justice concluded this week, which resulted in my client taking responsibility for two instances of misdemeanor failure to file tax payments, as well as a firearm charge, which will be subject to a pretrial diversion agreement,’ said Clark.

The First Son also managed to strike an out-of-court settlement with an alleged former fling Lunden Roberts in a long-running row over child support payments.

The 53-yearold will now pay $5,000 a month to support his daughter  Navy Joan, 4, who he has never met. 

Top Republican demands House launch Joe Biden impeachment probe over Hunter allegations: Ted Cruz calls WhatsApp messages with CCP official ‘direct evidence’ of First Son’s influence-peddling

By James Franey

Published: 14:04 EDT, 25 June 2023 | Updated: 16:06 EDT, 25 June 2023

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Congressional Republicans unloaded on the Justice Department in the minutes after former President Donald Trump was charged with mishandling classified documents and said he would report to a Miami courthouse Tuesday.

Senior Republicans immediately connected the prosecution to charges House Republicans have leveled at Biden family members based on sealed FBI documents based on tips that have yet to be released or verified.

‘If the people in power can jail their political opponents at will, we don’t have a republic,’ tweeted Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), coming to the defense of Trump, who led supporters in chants of ‘lock her up’ during the 2016 campaign. 

‘DOJ indicts former President / candidate Trump SAME DAY DOJ/FBI restricts access to unnecessarily redacted Biden allegations And they wonder why ppl think there r two standards for justice,’ fumed Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, a senior Judiciary Committee member, on Twitter.

Grassley has spent weeks joining Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to press the FBI to hand over information containing allegations about Biden. 

The fury came as a source told DailyMail.con Trump has been indicted on seven counts of federal charges related to possession of classified documents and obstruction of justice.

The chair of the House Republican Conference, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a former Trump critic who has become a leading Trump loyalist, blasted the FBI and accused Biden of weaponizing the DOJ. She, too, made reference to the internal the FD-1023 document that the FBI shared with lawmakers this week. 

‘The exact same day that the FBI is forced to turn over to Congress absolutely damning and credible allegations regarding Joe Biden’s illegal, egregious, and treasonous corruption, Joe Biden weaponizes his Department of Justice to indict Donald Trump,’ she said in a statement.

‘The American people are smart and understand this is the epitome of the illegal and unprecedented weaponization of the federal government against Joe Biden’s leading opponent, President Donald J. Trump. The radical Far Left will stop at nothing to interfere with the 2024 election in order to prop up the catastrophic presidency and desperate campaign of Joe Biden.’

She said she was committed to cutting out ‘rot’ in federal agencies and holding feds accountable, and she echoed Trump’s own words, calling it an ‘illegal witch hunt against President Trump. 

‘In 2024, we will vote like this country has never seen before and we will elect President Trump back to the White House to save America,’ she said.

The decision by Special Counsel Jack Smiths’ office to bring the first federal charges against a former president are certain to bring scrutiny, whichever way the case goes. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Smith after Trump announced his run for president in order to remove the investigation from his direct supervision.

House Republicans since they took over the chamber have already been crusading against ‘weaponization’ of agencies and alleged FBI malfeasance. 

‘It’s a sad day for America. God bless President Trump,’ wrote Rep. Jim Jordan, the House Judiciary Chairman who heads a special ‘weaponization’ subcommittee and who has vowed to root out alleged bias within the FBI. 

As usual, Trump was his own most forceful defender on Truth Social where he wrote that ‘The corrupt Biden Administration has informed my attorneys that I have been Indicted, seemingly over the Boxes Hoax, even though Joe Biden has 1850 Boxes at the University of Delaware, additional Boxes in Chinatown, D.C., with even more Boxes at the University of Pennsylvania, and documents strewn all over his garage floor where he parks his Corvette, and which is ‘secured’ by only a garage door that is paper thin, and open much of the time.’

He referenced multiple locations where material marked ‘classified’ was found on properties linked to Biden.

That matter is being probed by a different special counsel. There are distinctions that may weigh heavily in the president’s favor. His team says it was been fully cooperating whenever government documents were found, and there has been no search warrant nor lengthy and contentious negotiations as was the case with Trump.

Trump, who is at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club, called it ‘a DARK DAY for the United States of America.’

The feds days ago announced that it was closing a probe of former Vice President Mike Pence over documents discovered on his property.

‘We ought to defund and dismantle the DOJ. I stand with President Trump,’ wrote Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), one of several Republicans subpoenaed by the House January 6 Committee when Democrats were in control.

In addition to the possession of documents and obstruction charges, Trump was charged with willfully retaining national defense secrets in violation of the Espionage Act, making false statements and an obstruction of justice conspiracy, the New York Times reported.

Biden himself laughed off the corruption allegations when asked about it at a White House press conference Thursday.

‘Where’s the money?’ he said.

‘I’m joking. It’s a load of malarkey,’ he added.

Biden was also asked what he was doing to protect the independence of the Justice Department, after years of attacks by Trump when he was in and out of office.

‘You’d notice, I have never once – not one single time – suggested [to] the Justice Department what they should do or not do relative to bringing a charge or not bringing a charge,’ he said. ‘I’m honest.’

Chinese authorities secretly investigated a lab at the heart of the row over Covid’s origin after the pandemic began, an ex-insider sensationally revealed today.

President Xi Jinping’s communist administration has repeatedly denied the lab leak hypothesis throughout the pandemic, labelling it a smear campaign by ‘anti-China’ forces and insisting the virus emerged naturally in the city of Wuhan.

Yet Beijing considered the theory credible enough to instigate its own formal probe, according to the former chief of the country’s own CDC.

Professor George Gao, who ran the organisation when the pandemic began towards the end of 2019, claimed the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) was ‘double-checked’ by Government-backed experts.

The BBC says Professor Gao’s explosive revelation — shared with them — is the first acknowledgement of any internal inquiry taking place over the lab leak theory.

Discussing the possibility himself in a new podcast aimed to exploring the origins of the virus, he said: ‘You can always suspect anything. That’s science. 

‘Don’t rule out anything.’

At first, the overwhelming opinion, shared by the world’s leading experts, was that Covid crossed naturally from animals infected with a bat coronavirus.

But consensus over how the pandemic began three years ago has slowly started to shift. 

The lab leak theory centres around the fact that the virus first emerged miles away from the WIV, where researchers were known to be working on coronaviruses found in bats. 

No concrete proof to support either argument has ever been found, leaving experts fearing the truth will never be uncovered.

Professor Gao told Fever: The Hunt for Covid’s Origin that a formal investigation was carried out into the WIV after the start of the pandemic, although he did not specify when.

‘That lab was double-checked by the experts in the field,’ said the world-renowned immunologist and virologist. 

Professor Goa admitted he hadn’t seen the official result of the probe — but added he had ‘heard’ the lab was given the all-clear. 

‘I think the conclusion is that they are following all the protocols. They haven’t found [any] wrongdoing,’ he said.

In response to Professor Goa’s comments, China’s UK Embassy said: ‘The so-called “lab leak” is a lie created by anti-China forces. It is politically motivated and has no scientific basis.’

This isn’t the first time that Professor Gao has pushed past China’s official narrative of the pandemic.

Last month, he told a conference in Switzerland that, while he had seen no evidence to back it up, a lab leak origin for Covid was possible. 

The Oxford University-educated researcher has also warned that the true origins of Covid may never be revealed due to the issue being ‘too sensitive and politicised’.

And in April he, alongside colleagues, published a bombshell paper that ruled there was no proof the virus jumped from animals to humans at a now-infamous Wuhan wet market.

Professor Goa is now vice president of the government’s National Natural Science Foundation of China after stepping down from the CDC last year.

His retirement from the organisation in 2022, officially stated as being due to his age, was considered unusual. Chinese officials often stay in post well into their 80s.

Once dismissed as fringe hypothesis favoured by conspiracy theorists, the possibility of Covid accidentally spreading from a lab has gained increasing traction over the course of the pandemic.

Even US intelligence officials have backed it, with FBI Director Christopher Wray stating in February that the virus ‘most likely’ originated from a lab incident in Wuhan.

However, most experts maintain that Covid most likely emerged naturally, being transmitted from animals to humans.

Called zoonosis, such theories have largely pointed to Wuhan Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where live animals of numerous species were kept and sold, as the potential site where such an infection could have taken place. 

But Professor Gao, a previous critic of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market theory, has said because the search for early Covid cases in January 2020 was so heavily focused on this market and hospitals near it, officials may have missed a possible source of the virus on the other side of the city. 

In February 2021, an investigation into Covid’s origin by the World Health Organization (WHO) said it was ‘extremely unlikely’ the virus leaked from a lab. 

But plans for a second phase of the investigation, involving audits of laboratories in the Wuhan area, were rejected by the Chinese government.

Professor Gao said he supported the continuation of the WHO’s investigation but added the body would need to ‘negotiate with the government’.

The new podcast also speaks to Professor Ian Lipkin, an epidemiologist based at Columbia University in New York.

Professor Lipkin is himself tied up in the lab-leak hypothesis, being one of five co-authors of a March 2020 paper called ‘The Proximal Origin of Sars-Cov-2’.

This controversial paper has been credited with shutting down the idea that Covid may have leaked from a lab as conspiracy theory. It concluded: ‘We do not believe that any type of laboratory-based scenario is plausible.’

But speaking today, Professor Lipkin said he now has doubts over the certainty of that statement. 

He told the BBC that while he stands by the idea that Covid wasn’t deliberately created in a lab and a natural origin remained the most likely scenario, it wasn’t the only one. 

But rather than WIV, Professor Lipkin points to another lab, the Wuhan Centre for Disease Control, located just a few hundred metres from Huanan Seafood Market as one possibility.

This lab was known to be involved in the collection of thousands of blood and faecal samples from wild bats with staff who worked there not always wearing the recommended level of PPE while doing so. 

Professor Lipkin said Covid could resultingly have ‘originated outside of the market and been amplified in the market’.   

Scientific debate on the origins of Covid is ongoing, with no concrete proof to support either argument ever been found. 

China’s secrecy — in not providing vital access to scientists probing the origins and accusations of covering up evidence from the early days of the pandemic by wiping key databases — has only fuelled alternative theories.

Fever: The Hunt for Covid’s Origin is an eight-part podcast series starting on Radio 4 at 11am today, with new episodes to air the same time weekly. 

The episode featuring Professor Gao will be the sixth in the series.  

Presented by John Sudworth, the BBC’s former Beijing Correspondent who reported on Wuhan when Covid first emerged, the series is the result of a three-year investigation into Covid’s origins.

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It’s ‘disturbing’ Biden family whistleblower has gone missing, top Republican says: Mike Turner says FBI ‘isn’t doing its job’ and ‘turning a blind eye’ after colleague said they have lost informant dishing on Hunter and the first family’s business

By James Franey, Senior U.S. Political Reporter For Dailymail.Com

Published: 13:45 EDT, 16 May 2023 | Updated: 13:45 EDT, 16 May 2023

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