Justice Department officials and Hunter Biden’s attorneys are ramping up their pushback against Republican claims the president’s son received preferential treatment during the investigation into his failure to pay taxes.
Republicans released a transcript from an IRS whistleblower who questioned the integrity of the Biden tax probe just days after his attorney announced they reached an agreement with DOJ officials in Delaware that would mean no jail time but require Biden to plead guilty in relation to two tax crimes.
The deal — which has yet to be approved by a judge — and the investigation are already the subject of a three-committee probe after IRS investigator Gary Shapley alleged the criminal investigation was slow-walked by the DOJ.
But the GOP focus on Biden is now generating a firmer response, particularly since Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) suggested the episode could be grounds for impeaching Attorney General Merrick Garland.
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One of Biden’s attorneys late last week penned a blistering letter accusing House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) of violating provisions that protect the confidentiality of tax information in his rush to release Shapley's testimony.
“Since taking the majority in 2023, various leaders of the House and its committees have discarded the established protocols of Congress, rules of conduct, and even the law in what can only be called an obsession with attacking the Biden family,” Biden attorney Abbe Lowell wrote in a 10-page letter.
“The timing of the agents’ leaks and your subsequent decision to release their statements do not seem innocent — they came shortly after there was a public filing indicating the disposition of the five-year investigation of Mr. Biden. To any objective eye your actions were intended to improperly undermine the judicial proceedings that have been scheduled in the case. Your release of this selective set of false allegations was an attempt to score a headline in a news cycle — full facts be damned,” the letter continued.
Lowell complains the agents who spoke to the panel — Shapley and another unidentified person — had an “axe to grind” and assumed they knew better than prosecutors managing the five-year investigation.
Shapley asserts in his testimony that U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss asked for a special counsel to charge Biden in the District of Columbia, where more egregious tax conduct occurred, but was denied. Shapley also said D.C. District Attorney Matthew Graves opposed bringing charges in the District of Columbia.
But Weiss has strongly rejected any claims his office did not zealously pursue the case, pushing back on the whistleblower’s claims. Weiss, a Trump appointee who was one of the few U.S. attorneys asked to stay on after President Biden took office, told lawmakers in June he had complete authority over how to handle the investigation.
Weiss late Friday said in a letter to Congress that he could have asked for special counsel status if he wished to bring charges in Washington, and he was assured that option was available.
“In my June 7 letter I stated, ‘I have been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when and whether to file charges.’ ... I stand by what I wrote and wish to expand on what this means,” Weiss said.
“As the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, my charging authority is geographically limited to my home district. If venue for a case lies elsewhere, common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case,” he added.
“If not, I may request Special Attorney status from the Attorney General pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 515. Here, I have been assured that, if necessary after the above process, I would be granted § 515 Authority in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.”
Weiss has agreed to meet with the committee to discuss the investigation further “at the appropriate time.”
Graves has denied stymying the Hunter Biden investigation, while Garland has said Weiss had full control to make any decisions he deemed necessary in the case.
The contradiction between the whistleblower and Weiss about where to charge Biden, and whether a special counsel and charging in D.C. was denied, is at the core of the House Speaker’s interest in an impeachment inquiry targeting Garland.
McCarthy said Garland’s assertion before Congress and the public that Weiss had full control over the investigation could be grounds for impeachment if it’s determined that Shapley’s testimony is true.
“He didn't get charged for some of the highest prosecution. They want to have a special counsel. And now we're seeing that the DOJ, the attorney general, declined that, even though he's saying something different,” McCarthy said on Fox News last week. “None of it smells right, and none of it is right.”
Republicans have ramped up their investigations since the plea deal.
Smith, along with House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), requested interviews with more than a dozen figures involved in the investigation to determine whether there was “equal enforcement of the law.”
The panel wishes to speak with numerous FBI, IRS and DOJ employees.
“It’s little surprise that Hunter Biden’s attorneys are attempting to chill our investigation and discredit the whistleblowers who say they have already faced retaliation from the IRS and the Department of Justice despite statutory protections established by law. These whistleblowers bravely came forward with allegations about misconduct and preferential treatment for Hunter Biden — and now face attacks even from an army of lawyers he hired,” Smith said in response to the letter from Lowell.
“Worse, this letter misleads the public about the lawful actions taken by the Ways and Means Committee, which took the appropriate legal steps to share this information with [the] rest of Congress. It doesn’t even address concerns that counsel for Mr. Biden was regularly tipped off about potential warrants and raids in pursuit of evidence that implicated him, as well as his father. We will continue to go where the facts take us — and we will not abandon our investigation just because Mr. Biden’s lawyers don’t like it,” Smith added.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) on Wednesday spearheaded a letter signed by the three House chairmen asking for the Office of Special Counsel to review any potential retaliation against Shapley and the other whistleblower since they came forward.
Shapley on Monday also submitted an affidavit saying he was not the source of leaks to the media about the Biden investigation, a possibility Lowell raises in his letter.
Biden last month struck a deal with prosecutors to plead guilty to tax crimes and enter into a pretrial diversion program relating to unlawful possession of a weapon. The charges come after a five-year investigation into him.
Weiss said in a statement at the time the investigation was “ongoing.”
Garland has said he remained uninvolved in Weiss’s investigation, arguing the U.S. attorney’s independence was key to ensure a proper investigation was led by the facts.
He also defended the integrity of the Justice Department more broadly, pushing back on GOP claims of political bias.
“Some have chosen to attack the integrity of the Justice Department … by claiming we do not treat like cases alike. This constitutes an attack on an institution that is essential to American democracy and essential to the safety of the American people,” Garland said in a recent press conference. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”