The plot thickens. Joe Biden and the White House have long claimed that he had no connection to Hunter Biden’s businesses, even though the only apparent business product Hunter had was Joe. As the House investigations turn up more and more evidence of connections, the White House has kept adjusting the language of its denials.

But how can they spin 54 emails to Hunter’s business partner Eric Schwerin while Joe was vice president — and while Hunter was in Ukraine? Maybe they’ll chalk it up to tax preparation:

Joe Biden exchanged emails with his son Hunter’s business associate 54 times while he was serving as vice president, and some of the messages were sent around the time the elder Biden was traveling to Ukraine and his son was working for a Ukrainian gas company, according to records released by House Republicans.

A White House spokesperson declined to comment but pointed to statements by House Democrats that Hunter Biden’s business associate, Eric Schwerin, worked as Joe Biden’s financial adviser from 2009 to 2017 and helped him file his tax returns. Schwerin did not respond to requests for comment.

That in itself is very, very curious. If Joe had no connections to Hunter’s businesses, then why did Hunter’s “business associate” do Joe’s taxes at all? It’s not as if there were only a couple of tax preparers in Delaware or Washington DC that could have handled Scranton Joe’s supposedly humble finances. According to this report, it wasn’t just a one-off either. Every year Biden served as VP, Hunter’s business associate handled his taxes. At the very least, this has the appearance of a commingling of financial interests, and yet another connection between Hunter’s businesses and “The Big Guy.”

The substance of these emails has not been made public, but the timing of them look very suspicious:

All told, then-Vice President Biden emailed Schwerin 35 times before and after his 2014 trips to Ukraine. Five emails were exchanged just prior to a trip by Vice President Biden to Ukraine on June 7, 2014, and 27 emails were sent from the end of June to a second trip to Ukraine by Biden on Nov. 21, 2014.

The bulk of the communication occurred in the lead-up to and following an agreement for Hunter Biden to serve on the board of the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma.

June and November don’t seem to be months in which intensive communications would be necessary for tax filings. It was, however, a year before Biden defied the State Department and the White House in demanding that the Ukraine government dismiss state prosecutor Viktor Shokin. Shokin had taken aim at Burisma over corruption allegations, and its owner — who was paying Hunter a million dollars a year — wanted Shokin out of the way.

This email pattern strongly suggests that Joe Biden took an active part in those Ukrainian business interests of Hunter and Schwerin, and acted on behalf of their Ukrainian oligarch patron, Mykola Zlochevsky.

So far, the White House doesn’t have much to say about these e-mails. But what can they say, other than continue their gaslighting spin about Joe’s non-involvement with Hunter’s businesses? That narrative keeps getting more and more obviously false, and at some point, Democrats may need to reassess whether Joe’s worth it.