There have recently been rumors that a congressional committee is looking into a cellphone reportedly used by then-Vice President Joe Biden that was paid for by his son Hunter Biden, potentially in order to facilitate dubious foreign business deals for the family.
Peter Schweizer, a prominent conservative government watchdog, claimed in a recent interview that the records for that phone had been subpoenaed by the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, according to the Conservative Brief.
However, subsequent reporting indicated that, at least at that time, the committee had not issued a subpoena for that alleged cellphone used by the father and paid for by the son.
It was on May 16 that Schweizer, president of the Government Accountability Institute and famed investigator of political corruption, joined WABC's "Cats & Cosby" radio program with co-hosts John Catsimatidis and Rita Cosby to discuss the alleged cellphone that was discovered on Hunter Biden's laptop and used by Joe Biden between 2009-2017.
"We obtained that phone number and we’ve shared it with individuals and the Oversight Committee in Congress is going to subpoena those phone records," Schweizer said. "And what’s important here is that’s not a government phone, this is not Joe Biden’s private phone that he’s paying for himself. It’s actually ... Hunter Biden’s business that paid for it."
He continued, "I think it’s going to yield a lot of interesting information as to who Joe Biden was talking to on this phone that was being paid for by his son," such as some of Hunter's business partners and associates.
Asked who would subpoena the phone records and if they had been subpoenaed already, Schweizer went on to reiterate that it was the House Oversight Committee and "my understanding is they have subpoenaed those records."
However, just three days after Schweizer made that assertion about the cellphone records being subpoenaed, a staffer for the committee contradicted that claim.
Just the News reported that, at least as of May 19, a Republican staffer said the claim was "untrue" and the committee had not issued a subpoena for the private cellphone that was allegedly paid for by Hunter Biden but used by Joe Biden during his tenure as vice president.
As for Schweizer's appearance on "Cats & Cosby," the conversation shifted away from the rumored cellphone to instead discuss the reports that the IRS team investigating Hunter Biden had been suddenly removed from the case after several years in retaliation to a pair of whistleblowers from that team who had spoken out about how the case was being mishandled by their superiors.
"It’s very troubling -- the pattern that we’re seeing here. You have these whistleblower complaints filed by people in the IRS that were looking at Hunter Biden’s failure to pay taxes," Schweizer said. "They issued whistleblower complaint to Congress -- the report is that those individuals had been removed from the case, which is contrary to the Whistleblower Law -- you’re not allowed to remove somebody from their position just because they filed a whistleblower complaint."
"What happened in 2018 was the IRS looked into the fact that Hunter Biden had taken in all this foreign income, we exposed it in Secret Empires in 2018. That sort of launched the grand jury and you had this IRS investigation," he continued. "And they basically concluded that Hunter Biden had taken in millions of dollars from foreign sources, had not paid taxes on it. You have this friend, this lawyer in Los Angeles that paid two million to the IRS to pay some of the back taxes, but the IRS was looking into charges of tax evasion."
"They went to congressional committees and complained that they believe there had been political interference from DOJ. I haven’t seen the details, but this was the claim," Schweizer added. "And now, lo and behold, the IRS says we’re going to remove the team from investigating Hunter Biden, who had been on it now for what, five years, and we’re going to start -- apparently gonna have to start the whole thing over, so what does that mean to the investigation? What does that mean? I think it’s massive, but first of all … I think it’s illegal by the whistleblower statute. You cannot remove somebody from their position, simply because they made a whistleblower complaint."
