The powerful influence of Valerie Biden Owens—Joe’s ‘final gut check’
By Isabel Vincent and
Miranda Devine
July 21, 2023 2:50pm
The IRS was stopped from questioning Joe Biden’s sister, Valerie Biden Owens — said to be the president’s “final gut-check” in decision-making — about cash she received from Hunter Biden, a whistleblower has claimed.
Biden Owens received a payment via Venmo from the first son, according to an interview with IRS whistleblower Joseph Ziegler, a 13-year IRS veteran who gave testimony to the House Committee on Ways and Means last month.
“So I continually ask, ‘Can I go and interview them?’ And those were always met with ‘no,'” said Ziegler, who was known as “whistleblower #2” in the Ways and Means transcripts. “And I think one of them was Valerie Owens that we talked about that I wasn’t allowed to go and interview.”
Ziegler, a Democrat and the lead investigator in the agency’s IRS investigation into Hunter Biden, testified Wednesday at the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability about how efforts to interview Biden family members were rejected — and the probe into the first son’s lucrative consulting work with foreign countries was blocked by prosecutors at the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware.
While it’s not clear how much Biden Owens received from her nephew via Venmo, the exchange sheds new light on her powerful place at the heart of the Biden’s family and political operation.
The sheer force and single-minded purpose that characterizes Biden Owen’s work on her older brother’s political campaigns has earned her the nickname “Hurricane” — a moniker she adopted as one of her email addresses.
One former aide who worked on Biden’s failed 1988 campaign for president said that Biden Owens’s “amazing personality” often “compensated” for what they described as Biden’s short temper with staff members.
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https://nypost.com/2023/07/21/the-influence-of-valerie-biden-owensjoes-final-gut-check/
