Category: Merrick Garland
GOP to put IRS Hunter Biden whistleblowers at center stage
House Republicans will put their claims of unequal justice for Republicans and Democrats at center stage Wednesday, bringing IRS whistleblowers before the public to blast the government’s investigation into Hunter Biden, the son of President Biden.
The hearing will serve in part as a way for Republicans to give former President Trump political cover as he faces a likely third indictment over Jan. 6, while also fueling a potential impeachment inquiry against Attorney General Merrick Garland.
IRS investigator Gary Shapley and an unnamed IRS special agent told the House Ways and Means Committee in May that they were displeased with the investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax matters, accusing prosecutors of slow-walking the investigation and allowing the statute of limitations to run out. Hunter Biden in June reached a deal to plead guilty to tax crimes for 2017 and 2018.
In one point of drama, the identity of the unnamed IRS agent will be revealed at Wednesday’s hearing.
Republicans hope the credibility of the two whistleblowers will rub off on broader investigations of the Biden family’s business dealings. The House Oversight Committee claims it has uncovered financial documents showing that foreign companies funneled more than $10 million to Biden family members and associates, traveling through a web of shell companies.
“This is the A-team with the IRS. These two guys have stellar records,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said Tuesday.
The hearing could also help Republicans distract from Trump’s numerous legal problems after the former president said Tuesday that he expected an imminent indictment in relation to the Justice Department’s probe into the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
The hearing fits in with a broader GOP theme that the federal government is “weaponized” against Biden’s political opponents.
“If you notice recently, President Trump went up in the polls and was actually surpassing President Biden for reelection. So what do they do now? Weaponize government to go after their number one opponent,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said Tuesday.
McCarthy complained that in Hunter Biden’s case, prosecutors waited until after the statute of limitations was up for some tax years, then brought charges on others. He also referenced Shapley’s complaint that Hunter Biden’s lawyers were alerted to investigators’ interest in a storage unit.
The White House in a statement criticized the attacks on Biden.
“Instead of wasting time on politically-motivated attacks on a Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney, the rule of law, and the independence of our justice system, House Republicans should join President Biden to focus on the issues most important to the American people like continuing to lower inflation, create jobs, and strengthen health care," said Ian Sams, the White House spokesperson for oversight & investigations.
The whistleblower testimony has prompted Republican accusations of corruption at the highest levels and led McCarthy to float a potential impeachment inquiry into Garland.
A key detail for Republicans in Shapley’s testimony is whether David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware overseeing the Hunter Biden case, had authority to bring charges in other districts.
Shapley alleges that U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves “did not support the investigation,” pushing Weiss to request special counsel status in order to be able to bring charges outside of his usual Delaware jurisdiction. According to Shapley, Weiss was denied that status.
Weiss and Garland have both denied this. Each said the Delaware prosecutor was assured he could seek special attorney status if desired, governed under a different statute that likewise would have allowed Weiss to bring charges in any venue. Graves has also said he did not oppose Weiss bringing charges in Washington.
Some lawmakers have argued Shapley’s testimony shows unfamiliarity with the statutes governing prosecutorial power.
“If you want to put the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney’s word up against a disgruntled agent — who clearly doesn't even understand the difference between a special counsel and a specially designated attorney under Section 515 — you’re playing with fire,” said Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who before being elected to Congress served as a counselor in Trump’s first impeachment.
But McCarthy said the differing accounts could be fodder for an impeachment inquiry, as Garland told Congress that Weiss had “full authority to make those referrals you're talking about or to bring cases in other districts if he needs to do that.”
Democrats have also dismissed some of Shapley’s complaints, characterizing them as common differences of opinion between investigators and prosecutors.
Shapley’s testimony points to numerous instances where prosecutors expressed hesitation about taking any action that might influence the 2020 election. They appeared to be wary of repeating past actions that spurred criticism, notably former FBI Director James Comey’s statement about the Hillary Clinton investigation just days before the 2016 election.
The Oversight hearing also demonstrates how Republican interest in Hunter Biden and the business dealings of Biden’s family has pushed them into multiple different directions — from tracking funds flowing to Biden family members; to alleged interference in the criminal case against Hunter Biden; to an unverified allegation that an executive of Ukrainian energy company Burisma (of which Hunter Biden was a board member) offered a bribe to President Biden.
“There's really two investigations going on now. There's the investigation of the Biden crime, and there's investigation of a government cover-up,” Comer said.
While Comer said that the Ways and Means Committee and the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Federal Government will also investigate any potential cover-up, he said that the Oversight panel is still focused on “following the money.”
Still, Oversight Republicans have gotten pulled into the cover-up allegations.
On Tuesday, Comer said in a statement that committee staff conducted an interview with a former FBI supervisory special agent who confirmed some aspects of the IRS whistleblowers’ testimony — specifically, that the Secret Service and the Biden transition team were alerted to plans for the IRS to show up and seek an in-person interview with Hunter Biden that ultimately never happened.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) said in a statement that Comer had “cherry-picked and distorted statements of a witness to advance Republicans’ false narrative about political interference in the Hunter Biden investigation.”
He’s also dismissed the GOP for fixating on investigations that Trump-appointed officials chose not to advance, pointing to Comer basing much of his investigation on a confidential tip about President Biden accepting a bribe that the FBI was not able to corroborate.
“There was an assessment opened up, and they decided not to move from the assessment level to either a preliminary investigation or to a full investigation,” Raskin said last week.
“They closed it down.”
This story was updated at 6:54 p.m.
DOJ, Hunter Biden team fight back on GOP probes
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.
More from The Hill
Former GOP rep, Jan. 6 select committee adviser working with Hunter Biden legal team
Hunter Biden’s lawyer blasts IRS whistleblowers in scathing letter to GOP committee chair
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.”
GOP hit list: Biden officials targeted by Republicans for impeachment
House Republicans are grappling over whether to move forward with impeaching President Biden and a host of his top officials, putting a spotlight on how the conference has turned to impeachment as a tool to target administration officials.
Republicans disagree over how hard to push for impeachment because some are worried the efforts could backfire after the party heavily criticized Democrats for their House impeachments of former President Trump.
Here’s a look at who House Republicans are targeting for impeachment, and why they are doing so.
President Biden
President Joe Biden speaks during a Monday event about high-speed internet infrastructure, in the East Room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
It’s far from clear that most Republicans want to move forward with impeachment proceedings against Biden.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) introduced a procedural measure to force a floor vote on her impeachment articles, which led to internal sparring and a days-long clash between GOP leaders and the congresswoman. The House voted to punt the resolution to committees and avoid making lawmakers vote on it on the floor.
The resolution, which many Republicans deemed as premature, accused Biden of “a complete and total invasion at the southern border.” The resolution includes two articles related to Biden’s handling of matters along the U.S.-Mexico border — one for dereliction of duty and one for abuse of power.
During the last Congress, GOP lawmakers in the minority introduced several impeachment resolutions against Biden, targeting him on immigration, the COVID pandemic and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Boebert’s move was an escalation that threatened to put vulnerable moderates in the caucus in a tough spot if they had to vote on it.
There are other voices in the GOP calling for Biden’s impeachment.
Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley told Fox News this week that congressional Republicans “absolutely should” look into impeachment. Her comments followed an IRS whistleblower’s claims about tax crime investigations into the president’s son Hunter Biden.
But Boebert’s push has been dismissed by some in her party as frivolous.
“I’ve got a pretty high bar for impeachment,” Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) said last week. “I fear that snap impeachments will become the norm, and they mustn’t.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland
Attorney General Merrick Garland during a Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Subcommittee answers a question during a hearing to discuss the President’s FY 2024 budget for the Department of Justice on Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (Greg Nash)
Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) brought up impeaching Garland this week, tying it to the Department of Justice’s handling of the investigations into Hunter Biden.
McCarthy said an impeachment inquiry could be warranted over alleged political bias and DOJ “weaponization.” The push has been fueled by an IRS whistleblower’s claims, denied by Garland, that there was political interference in tax crime investigations into Hunter Biden.
“Someone has lied here,” McCarthy said Wednesday on Fox News. “If we find that Garland has lied to Congress, we will start an impeachment inquiry.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) filed articles of impeachment against Garland last summer over the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property for classified and sensitive documents.
“If the whistleblowers’ allegations are true, this will be a significant part of a larger impeachment inquiry into Merrick Garland’s weaponization of DOJ,” McCarthy said in a tweet.
McCarthy’s focus on Garland is a change in how he has handled calls from Republicans to impeach other members of the Biden administration. He has vowed any impeachment proceedings would not be political.
The White House has bashed the idea of a Garland impeachment inquiry, saying it is an effort to distract from the economy and other topics top of mind for Americans.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas speaks at a March 10 news conference ahead of the lifting of Title 42. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf)
Republicans, led by Greene and fellow Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Pat Fallon (Texas), have targeted Mayorkas with articles of impeachment over the flow of migrants at the southern border.
House Republicans have held multiple hearings focused on what they describe as Mayorkas’s “dereliction of duty,” and mishandling of border policy, pointing to surges of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border that set records in 2022.
“I just think that more and more people are starting to come around to the necessity to impeach the guy,” Biggs said.
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) recently announced the panel would kick off a formal investigation of Mayorkas as a necessary step ahead of an impeachment inquiry.
The focus on Mayorkas has drawn criticism from Democrats who believe Republicans are resorting to impeachment over what amounts to a disagreement over immigration policy.
Homeland Security also has pushed back on GOP arguments over the border while largely blaming Congress for the problems.
The push to impeach Mayorkas has also been complicated by a drop in apprehensions at the southern border in the weeks after the Biden administration ended Title 42, which had been in place since 2020 and allowed for the rapid expulsion of migrants.
FBI Director Christopher Wray
FBI Director Christopher Wray gives an opening statement during an April 27 hearing to discuss President Biden's fiscal 2023 budget request for the FBI. (Greg Nash)
Greene in May said she would target Wray and introduce articles of impeachment against him.
The congresswoman argued that Way turned the FBI into Biden and Garland’s “personal police force” and that the FBI has “intimidated, harassed, and entrapped” U.S. citizens who have been “deemed enemies of the Biden regime.”
While citing some FBI actions that she argued show the agency overreached, Greene referred to the plot that multiple men had in 2020 plotted to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). She noted that two of the men were acquitted after defense attorneys argued that the FBI entrapped them and convinced them to engage in the conspiracy.
She also mentioned that the FBI searched Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property for classified and sensitive documents, arguing that the former president didn’t break any laws. Trump has been indicted by a Miami jury over his handling of the records.
Wray is scheduled to testify before the House Judiciary Committee on July 12.
The hearing comes after the Republican-led House Oversight Committee threatened to hold Wray in contempt over his initial refusal to turn over a document detailing an unverified tip that GOP lawmakers claim shows then-Vice President Biden’s involvement in a bribery scheme. The panel later backed off its contempt threat.
The FBI and Justice Department as a whole have become common targets for conservatives, who have repeatedly claimed federal law enforcement is biased against Republicans and has been weaponized. Those claims have been supercharged by the federal indictment of Trump on charges over his retention of classified government documents after he left office.
McCarthy feels the heat as frustrated conservatives grow more aggressive
Six months into the new Congress, Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) is increasingly bending to the demands of the conservative fringe of his GOP conference, a dynamic highlighted this week by his surprise threat to impeach U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The Speaker has, to an extent, been successful in disarming his conservative detractors through the first half of the year, winning their support in January’s race for the gavel and sidelining them more recently in adopting must-pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling.
But frustrated conservatives are getting more aggressive, threatening to tank federal funding bills and risk a government shutdown while pushing harder to force the impeachment votes GOP leaders have sought to avoid.
The dynamics reflect the bald political reality of governing with a tiny and restive House majority, one in which the conservative distrust of the Speaker runs deep and GOP leaders have little room for defections when their legislative priorities come to the floor.
The result has been that McCarthy is compelled, more and more, to act on the demands of the small but pugnacious group of conservative firebrands who have threatened his Speakership from the first days of January and are vowing to exert their leverage to obtain their legislative objectives.
“I am maybe not on his Christmas card list,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), former head of the far-right Freedom Caucus, of his antagonistic relationship with the Speaker.
McCarthy has gradually responded to the conservative demands simply by conceding to them.
In recent weeks, the Speaker has catered to his right flank by targeting next year’s spending at levels below those outlined in the bipartisan debt limit deal. He’s endorsed a resolution to censure Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) after an initial vote splintered the GOP. He’s swallowed a vote to impeach President Biden — even if only to punt the issue to committee.
He’s championed resolutions to expunge the two impeachments of former President Trump. And most recently, he’s adopted a harder line on the ouster of cabinet officials, like Garland.
“If the allegations from the IRS whistleblowers are proven true through House Republican investigations, we will begin an impeachment inquiry on Biden's Attorney General, Merrick Garland,” McCarthy tweeted Tuesday.
That position is a major shift for the Speaker, who has been cold to the idea of rushing into impeachments this year, warning against politicizing the process and arguing for the conclusion of congressional investigations before launching any impeachment proceedings. But impatient conservatives have other ideas.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) last week forced the vote on Biden’s impeachment and is threatening to bring it to the floor again if the committees of jurisdiction don’t act quickly enough for her liking.
“I would hope that it would be this year — and very soon,” Boebert said as Congress left Washington last week for a long July Fourth recess.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) has introduced impeachment articles targeting at least four administration officials, including Biden and Garland, and is warning she’ll use special procedures to fast-track those bills to the floor.
And Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said this week Garland might be just the start.
“It’s hard to keep up with it all,” Roy told WMAL radio on Monday.
“We gotta look into [Alejandro] Mayorkas,” he continued, referring to the Homeland Security secretary. “We gotta look into Biden himself. We gotta look into Hunter Biden. … The American people deserve an administration that is not above the law and lawless.”
Even more pressing than impeachment has been the internal GOP battle over deficit spending. McCarthy, as one of the many concessions to his conservative critics in January, vowed a push to cut next year’s spending back to last year’s levels — a reduction of roughly $120 billion below the spending caps agreed upon in the debt ceiling deal.
McCarthy, backed by Appropriations Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-Texas), is vowing to make good on that promise, targeting 2024 spending at 2022 levels. But the conservatives are skeptical, accusing the Speaker of using budget “gimmicks,” known as rescissions, to claim savings that won’t materialize.
“One place I’m pretty firmly planted is, we had an agreement on fiscal year 2022 discretionary spending levels as a fundamental component of the Speaker’s contest and the agreement that resolved that. I believe that needs to be honored,” said Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.).
“I don’t know how, precisely, we’ll get it resolved.”
Opposition from only a handful of conservatives would be enough to block the Republicans’ appropriations bills, raising the likelihood McCarthy will have to slash 2024 spending even further — at least in the initial round of House bills — and heightening the odds of a government shutdown later in the year, when Senate Democrats inevitably will oppose those cuts.
In the eyes of Democrats, McCarthy has become captive to a small conservative fringe for the sake of retaining his grip on power.
“The Speaker is catering to an extreme element in his caucus, and I don’t even think the majority of his caucus agrees with that position,” Rep. Annie Kuster (D-N.H.), head of the New Democrat Coalition, told reporters last week.
Democrats are not the only critics. The conservatives’ threat to oppose their party’s spending bills is also frustrating more moderate Republicans and leadership allies, who say the hard-liners are ignoring the political reality of a divided government.
“When it’s all said and done, you're gonna end up with the debt ceiling agreement,” said centrist Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.). “Because the Senate’s not gonna go more conservative, and we’re not gonna let them spend more.”
Complicating McCarthy’s balancing act has been the candidacy of Trump, who remains the overwhelming favorite to win the GOP presidential nomination despite a long trail of legal and ethical troubles, including recent indictments over his handling of classified documents.
In an interview with CNBC on Tuesday morning, McCarthy, who has not endorsed a 2024 candidate, raised the question of whether Trump is the strongest Republican contender to challenge Biden next year. The remarks reportedly sparked an outcry, forcing McCarthy to shift gears and hail the former president’s recent poll ratings.
“Just look at the numbers this morning,” McCarthy told Breitbart News several hours later. “Trump is stronger today than he was in 2016.”
Mychael Schnell contributed.
Klobuchar blows off criticism of Hunter Biden attending state dinner
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) on Sunday shrugged off criticism of President Biden's son Hunter Biden attending a state dinner at the White House last week just after pleading guilty to tax crimes.
"You know, I think as the president explained, that's his son. That's a separate thing," Klobuchar said on NBC's "Meet the Press," when asked if she thinks it was appropriate for Hunter Biden to be at the state dinner, which Attorney General Merrick Garland also attended.
The president's son was in attendance at the dinner held during the official state visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week. Court documents last week also revealed Hunter, who has been under investigation for tax matters for several years, will plead guilty to tax crimes in a plea deal with prosecutors, and reached a diversion agreement relating to unlawful possession of a weapon.
"And I would like to say about that, that decision was made by an independent prosecutor, who is a Trump appointed U.S. attorney, who had 10 years of experience, well-respected. [The] Philadelphia Inquirer reported that he was a registered Republican. He looked at the facts and evidence and made that decision," Klobuchar said of the legal development.
"And by the way, if that's what the Republicans want to run on, in the coming election, good luck," Klobuchar said.
Asked whether she wished the "perception" were different, Klobuchar said, "You always wish there are different perceptions."
Republicans have bashed the deal as too lenient on the president's son, with many attacking the Justice Department. Garland, who was also at the state dinner, has denied allegations of political interference in the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter Biden.
What Will Joe Biden Do If Hunter Is Indicted?
By Charles Lipson for RealClearWire
What will President Biden do if his son is indicted by the federal prosecutor in Delaware? That’s one of three questions looming over U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ fateful choice.
The second is whether the indictment will go after a larger, coordinated family scheme of influence peddling or confine itself to smaller, tightly-confined issues like lying to get a gun permit and not registering as a foreign lobbyist.
The third is whether Attorney General Merrick Garland will approve Weiss’ proposed charges. Significant political calculations follow from those decisions.
It’s easy enough to answer what Garland will do. He has little choice but to approve any charges Weiss proposes after the government’s multi-year investigation. Anything else would look shady, a far cry from the neutral, apolitical justice Garland’s department is charged with dispensing. Burying the charges, after Garland’s refusal to appoint a special counsel, would embroil his department in its nastiest controversy since John Mitchell befouled it under President Nixon.
Assuming the federal attorney proposes felony charges and Garland approves them, Joe Biden faces the toughest choice of his political life.
The president’s dilemma is why it’s so interesting to follow recent speculation by Miranda Devine, a reporter and columnist for the New York Post. She’s the most informed journalist on the Hunter Biden story. Her paper broke the news about the emails on Hunter’s laptop, three weeks before the 2020 election, and Devine has done the best follow-up reporting.
To bury that story before the election took the combined, Herculean efforts of the legacy media, social media giants, and former CIA officials. Their success helped elect Biden. But the “little story that could” just keeps chugging along, mostly because the corruption is so extensive, so rich for investigation. Criminal charges now seem likely, not that the mainstream media has shown much interest.
Now, Devine is speculating that Biden is setting the stage to pardon Hunter, framing it as the actions of a loving father who backs his troubled child. “My son has done nothing wrong,” Biden told MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle in a rare one-on-one interview. “I trust him. I have faith in him, and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.”
Whether such sentiments presage a pardon, as Devine thinks, is still a guess. We can say something more concrete, though, as Biden weighs such a move. Four consequences stand out:
- A presidential pardon would set off a political firestorm.
- The White House will try its best to prevent any public revelation of the family’s business dealings. That means the president and his advisors want to prevent a trial, get Hunter to take a plea, and convince the judge to seal the evidence. Another option is to go trial, knowing it won’t be held until after the election.
- If Biden pardons his son this year, he’s signaling he won’t run for reelection. He wouldn’t put that albatross around his own neck if he intended to face the voters.
- If Biden does run and pardons his son after November 2024, the political impact depends on who wins the White House and Capitol Hill. The calculations are more complicated than one might expect.
Let’s consider each in turn.
First, a pardon would set off the biggest political firestorm since Watergate. It would look worse than self-dealing, bad as that is. It would look like the president is covering up his family’s corruption, not only to get Hunter off the hook but to prevent the disclosure of damning evidence in court.
That evidence is likely to touch many more Biden family members than Hunter, and perhaps the president himself. The more Biden family members who are implicated, the more the whole operation looks like a concerted operation to monetize Joe’s political position. It also might threaten to shred Joe’s repeated claim that he knew nothing about any family business interests or influence peddling. The wider the sleaze, the harder it is to sell that story.
The chairman of the House committee investigating these issues has said Hunter’s corruption was merely one part of the family business. And that business was selling influence. Rep. James Comer has publicly said that his House Oversight Committee has already collected evidence that nine Biden family members are involved in sketchy business deals, including substantial payments from foreign firms.
Some of those firms are closely linked to the Chinese Communist Party. Comer added that his committee is investigating the possible involvement of at least three more family members, as well as Joe Biden’s own role. His conclusion: “The entire Biden family” is entrapped in the financial enrichment scheme. So far, however, Comer hasn’t named names or provided the evidence. He says he will provide much more at a major press conference Wednesday.
Comer’s principle suggestion is that the Biden family’s influence-peddling scheme is much broader, and their criminal actions more serious, than isolated schemes perpetrated by the president’s conniving second son. He adds that his evidence points to Joe Biden’s direct involvement, including possible payments for official actions.
That is what he told Maria Bartiromo on Sunday, although he hasn’t yet provided the evidence for that incendiary allegation. Comer is also attacking the FBI for desultory investigation – which ignored much of the malfeasance – and calling out the mainstream media for its concerted silence.
Related: Hunter Biden’s Stripper Baby Mama Drama Isn’t Making Joe Biden’s Life Any Easier
The Internal Revenue Service might be implicated, too, since a lot of payments – and a lot of Hunter’s income – went through what Comer calls the family’s “web of LLCs.” A senior supervisory agent at the IRS is seeking whistleblower protection to tell Congress about “preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed” in investigating Hunter’s taxes.
If political pressure really was applied to the IRS over Hunter’s taxes, or if senior agents acted improperly to curry favor, those would obviously be very serious matters, legally and politically. Comer and the House Republicans in the committee’s majority want that testimony under oath and are seeking responses from the IRS and DOJ.
Anticipating an indictment soon, Comer has urged the Justice Department to hold off until his committee presents more evidence to the public this week. “When you have the opportunity to see the evidence that the House Oversight Committee will produce with respect to the web of [Biden family] LLCs, with respect to the number of adversarial countries that this family influence peddled in, and this is not just about the president’s son. This is about the entire Biden family, including the President of the United States.”
However wide-ranging the indictment is, Hunter will do everything he can to strike a plea deal and seal all the evidence to prevent its disclosure at trial. That would clearly be the preference inside the White House. But it’s not in the public interest.
If the DOJ tries to seal the evidence, it would be joining in a cover-up. The Department must require that Hunter attest to all incriminating evidence and that it all be made public as part of any plea deal. The judge himself should demand it. That requirement might kill Hunter’s willingness to take the deal. Rather than reveal the evidence now, the White House would prefer kick it down the road, to a trial date after the November 2024 election.
Whether a trial happens or not, a pardon for Hunter would be politically fatal for the president, and he and his advisers must know it. That leads to a clear conclusion. If Joe pardons Hunter this year, running for reelection becomes unrealistic. Such a self-inflicted wound would be a far more powerful signal of his intentions than a speech declaring his candidacy. There’s no way Joe would eviscerate his political prospects like that if he intended to face the voters again.
Of course, Biden could delay any pardon until after November 2024. That would still invite a high-profile congressional investigation and perhaps impeachment, but the political maneuvering would depend on the election outcome. If Biden loses and the current Republican House moves quickly to impeach, Senate Democrats would be in a bind. It takes overwhelming evidence to convince senators to humiliate a president from their own party. The only thing that would do it is overwhelming fear of their constituents at the ballot box.
Related: Things Get Awkward When Karine Jean-Pierre Gets Asked About Hunter Biden’s Baby With a Stripper
The situation is entirely different if Biden wins and the Republicans take both the House and Senate. The problem, in three words, is President Kamala Harris. Although the new House would have no trouble collecting votes for impeachment, they might hesitate before passing the ultimate decision to their Republican colleagues in the Senate. Do they really want to elevate Harris into the Oval Office?
None of these prospects is a happy one. Each one adds to the misery of a country beset by lawlessness on the streets, chaos at the southern border, stagnant real income, and a looming debt crisis. We need to know whether the Biden family – not just Hunter – was engaged in a series of corrupt schemes to peddle the influence of a high-ranking government official.
We need to know all the family members involved and their business partners. We need to know what they were paid for doing and who paid them. What we don’t need is a weak, narrowly-drawn indictment, an official cover-up of the evidence, and, worst of all, a self-serving presidential pardon.
Syndicated with permission from RealClearWire.
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White House charges GOP with hypocrisy on Trump, Biden
The White House blasted Republicans on Tuesday, accusing them of hypocrisy with how they’ve handled the separate controversies surrounding classified documents found at President Biden’s garage and office and former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
In a call with reporters, White House aides accused the GOP of engaging in “political theater” by attacking Biden while giving a free pass to Trump.
“The president and his team have been fully cooperating, acting responsibly and ensuring that this is handled properly,” said Ian Sams, a spokesman for the White House Counsel's Office. “You’ve seen something far different emerging among elected Republicans. What are they doing? They’ve decided that it’s time for more political stunts and theater.“
The call was set up after a difficult week for the White House that found Democrats struggling at times to explain why documents had been taken to Biden’s garage and office, and why the public hadn’t been told about them until Jan. 10 — when the news first broke about the discovery.
The White House first discovered that classified documents from Biden’s time as vice president had been taken to the Penn Biden Center in Washington, D.C., on Nov. 2 — before the midterm elections and after Biden and other Democrats had blasted Trump over classified documents at Mar-a-Lago found earlier in the year.
The White House Counsel’s Office notified the National Archives of the discovery days later and the Archives then notified the Department of Justice. Attorney General Merrick Garland last week appointed a special counsel to look into the issue after Garland had previously appointed a special counsel to look into the Trump classified documents matter.
On Tuesday, days after House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) asked if the White House had a visitor log for Biden’s Wilmington, Del., residence, Biden’s team sought to go on offense by accusing the GOP overreaching on the issue.
Comer, in an interview with CNN, also called Biden’s residence a “crime scene” after the classified documents were discovered at Biden’s home.
Sams and others say the GOP fury over the found Biden documents stands in sharp contrast to the more blasé reaction many Republicans had to the discovery of classified documents at Trump’s home.
Democrats also have argued the two situations are very different because of the level of cooperation Biden has sought to maintain in alerting the Archives to the discovery. Trump, in contrast, largely stiff-armed the Archives, they say.
In addition, the documents at Mar-a-Lago were in a Florida estate where hundreds of guests come and go for social occasions.
“They’re faking outrage even though they defended the former president’s actions,” Sams told reporters on Tuesday.
White House aides and allies pointed to the irony of Comer’s remarks in August when he brushed off Trump’s possession of classified materials.
“What I’ve seen that the National Archives was concerned about Trump having in his possession didn’t amount to a hill of beans,” Comer told Newsmax at the time.
In November, Comer also told CNN that a House investigation into Trump’s Mar-a-Lago documents would “not be a priority.”
Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), who served as the chief investigator in the first impeachment of Trump, told The Hill it’s “just the latest example of House Republicans abusing their oversight authority and demanding things they have argued against in the past.
“The American people are tired of Republican hypocrisy and Chairman Comer is not off to a good start, he said.
Basil Smikle, a Democratic strategist and the director of the public policy program at Hunter College, said Republicans like Comer were “willing to shield Trump from any public of governmental scrutiny while he was president but are hypocritically intent upon using all available congressional power at their disposal to unpack Biden’s life, shame him and discredit Democrats.”
In many ways, White House officials and their allies are happy to have this fight with Republicans, allies say because they are taking the bet that Trump’s baggage on this issue is worse than their own and has the potential of backfiring.
White House allies say Republicans will have a tough time explaining why Trump held on to the documents and then resisted the FBI. Biden, on the other hand has fully cooperated with the Department of Justice and the appointed special counsel.
“It’s ludicrous,” one Democratic strategist close to the White House said of the GOP.
“Do they really want to go there?" said one Democratic strategist close to the White House. "Didn't their guy have many more documents at his home? Didn't he try and stop people from taking them back?”
Republicans have used the controversy to blunt Biden’s trajectory weeks ahead of his expected announcement for reelection. They’ve sought to use the episode to paint Biden as corrupt.
“The Biden are just a Delaware version of the Sopranos,” former House Speaker Newt Gingrich wrote on Twitter.
Republican strategist Doug Heye said it’s fair game.
“Congress tends not to deeply investigate a White House of the same party,” Heye said. “That was true of Democrats last Congress and of Republicans under Trump.“
And he predicted that the controversy wouldn’t backfire on the GOP.
“This cuts at Biden’s argument that he and his team of pros won’t make the mistakes Trump and his Addams Family team made — on something Biden specifically criticized. And when Democrats say, but Trump was worse, well, okay but now you’re talking degrees and if you’re explaining you’re losing.”
House Republicans Demand DOJ, FBI Preserve Documents In Relation To FBI Raid On Trump
House Republicans on Monday sent letters to top officials in the Biden administration demanding they preserve and hand over documents related to the FBI raid on former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.
Eighteen Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee sent the letters to Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain.
“The FBI’s unprecedented raid of President Trump’s residence is a shocking escalation of the Biden Administration’s weaponization of law-enforcement resources against its political opponents,” each letter begins.
“The American people deserve transparency and accountability from our most senior law-enforcement officials in the executive branch,” it continues. “We will settle for nothing but your complete cooperation with our inquiry.”
The correspondence demands that each department preserve “all documents and communications” related to the raid and produce them to the committee “no later than 5:00 p.m. on August 29, 2022.”
House Republicans have sent letters to top officials in the Biden administration demanding they send to Congress documents and communications about the FBI search of Trump’s residence. https://t.co/WMN9zN63mQ
— CBS Mornings (@CBSMornings) August 15, 2022
Republicans Demand FBI, DOJ Preserve and Release Documents
The letters from House Republicans to Biden administration officials demanding they preserve and release documents related to the unprecedented raid on the President’s main political opponent are more symbolic for the time being.
The GOP does not have subpoena power as the minority in the House of Representatives.
Still, the move signals an intensification of possible probes into the matter should the GOP win back the House following the midterms.
BREAKING: Top Senate Republicans PROMISE to investigate DOJ, FBI over SHAM Mar-a-Lago Raid— Police-state EXPOSED?! pic.twitter.com/z0exXvJ4ib
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 15, 2022
The letters come just days after Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) vowed that the Senate would investigate the raid should Republicans wrestle back control in November.
“If I’m in the majority, and I’m Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, again, I intend to pursue all of these things until we get to the bottom of it,” Grassley told Breitbart News over the weekend.
Preserve your documents. pic.twitter.com/FeuIOQE42w
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) August 15, 2022
Demand a Briefing From DHS
Republican lawmakers late last week demanded a Homeland Security briefing by the FBI, Department of Justice, and National Archives following news that Garland gave a personal greenlight to the raid on Trump’s home.
But, as Fox News host Jesse Waters pointed out to Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) – Republicans like to talk a lot about what they’re going to do regarding the unprecedented harassment directed at Trump, but will they actually take action?
MUST WATCH: @JesseBWatters SLAMS @LindseyGrahamSC for being all talk, no action!
Lindsey gives bs answer after bs answer, but Watters kept pushing back.
Great job, Jesse! pic.twitter.com/4VWSSfM1Pp
— Alex Bruesewitz (@alexbruesewitz) August 9, 2022
Democrats certainly would. They threatened impeachment for months upon months then acted when they found the first opening. Then they did it again.
And quite obviously, the harassment has never ended.
Not sure what’s better: Jesse Watters getting PO’d or Lindsey Graham squirming.https://t.co/NGgX4aqEFx
— Unaffiliated Voter (@WayneDupreeShow) August 10, 2022
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy was one of the first to call for a probe into Garland’s actions, saying on the very day of the raid that he had “seen enough.”
“Attorney General Garland, preserve your documents and clear your calendar,” he wrote.
Democrats have countered the GOP’s efforts with Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) sending their own letter to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
That letter seeks a national security damage assessment on the documents seized from Mar-a-Lago.
Trump has claimed all documents in his Mar-a-Lago home were “declassified” and insisted officials “didn’t need to ‘seize’ anything. They could have had it at any time.”
The FBI under the direction of Garland fetched the documents – including ancillary material such as Trump’s passports that they have since returned – and now the Democrats are going to use them to investigate the former President yet again.
Do Republicans understand they need to be equally as relentless in order to stop this level of corruption?
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Trump Speaks: Angrily Condemns ‘Political Persecution’ As FBI Raids Mar-a-Lago
Former President Donald Trump slammed never-ending “political persecution” by Democrats as he confirmed his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida had been raided by the FBI.
“These are dark times for our Nation, as my beautiful home, Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, is currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents,” Trump said in a statement released Monday evening.
“Nothing like this has ever happened to a President of the United States before.”
CNN reports that the FBI raided Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home as part of an investigation into the handling of possible classified documents that may have been brought there.
Trump’s Florida home was raided by FBI. Here’s what we know:
– Part of an investigation into whether he took classified documents from the White House
– Raid began Monday morning and lasted until after 6 p.m.
– Trump says Mar-a-Lago safe was opened https://t.co/jhrne5EanT pic.twitter.com/03oMeKjFbm— Bloomberg Quicktake (@Quicktake) August 9, 2022
RELATED: Report: Biden Justice Department Criminally Investigating Trump ‘Effort to Overturn Election’
Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Home Raided by FBI
The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) said in February that Trump earlier this year had to return 15 boxes of documents that were improperly taken from the White House.
The FBI appears to be pursuing concerns of classified materials in the home of former President Trump, something that they provably dismissed and allowed Hillary Clinton to do when she served as Secretary of State.
Trump blasted the raid and suggested it was part of a coordinated weaponization of federal government agencies to stop him from running for President in 2024.
“Such an assault could only take place in broken, Third-World Countries,” he stated. “Sadly, America has now become one of those countries, corrupt at a level not seen before.”
“The political persecution of President Donald J. Trump has been going on for years, with the now fully debunked Russia, Russia, Russia Scam, Impeachment Hoax 11, Impeachment Hoax #2, and so much more, it just never ends, it is political targeting at the highest level!”
Trump says MAL has been searched by feds pic.twitter.com/UEC5KE5pJm
— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) August 8, 2022
Supporters Come out in Droves
Numerous supporters of former President Donald Trump gathered outside his Mar-a-Lago home after news had spread of the FBI raid.
Several suggested the raid was a political move by the Department of Justice to prevent Trump from running again in 2024. Others simply concurred that it was political persecution.
“As soon as I saw it, I drove here from Tampa. This is nuts,” one man who had driven across the state told Fox News. “We all know what you’re trying to do, DOJ. You’re trying to create some kind of charge so he’s not going to be able to run for reelection.”
“They’re going to do anything they can to get him. They’re terrified of him,” another claimed.
A White House official claimed President Biden was not given advance notice of the FBI raid.
Lara Trump offered commentary hinting that the siege on Mar-a-Lago was more to do with the left and the establishment’s hatred of the former President.
“They detest Donald Trump, not just on the Democrat side, but the general establishment, because he’s not one of them, because he doesn’t play their game,” she said.
Biden’s America
From the IRS to the FBI: They are coming for youThe DOJ’s escalating tactics are a danger to the Republic
LARA TRUMP: An unannounced raid by the FBI conducted on a former President…If this is what they are able to do to him, think what they could do to you pic.twitter.com/RI2Z8G4820
— LionHearted (@LionHearted76) August 9, 2022
Lara Trump warned that if the Justice Department and the FBI are willing to do this to a former President, “think about what they could do to you.”
The Political Insider reported on Monday that the so-called Inflation Reduction Act passed by Senate Democrats over the weekend adds $80 billion to the IRS budget for enforcement purposes.
That budget would unleash roughly 87,000 new IRS auditors.
The government is hiring 87,000 IRS agents because Western governments view their own people as the enemy now and they’ve turned their guns on them. It’s why I believe we will have a massive worldwide turning at some point in the coming years.
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) August 8, 2022
Matt Schlapp, the chairman of The American Conservative Union, says the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago demonstrates the Biden administration has converted the United States into a Third World country.
“President Biden’s politicized FBI just raided President Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago,” he wrote. “This nation is becoming unrecognizable. Biden has successfully transformed America into a third-world country.”
BREAKING: Patriots arrive at Mar-a-Lago to show support for Donald Trump after news broke of the FBI’s Raid on him: pic.twitter.com/ILzFyMLDcB
— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) August 9, 2022
Schlapp notes that a CPAC Texas straw poll shows respondents believe the greatest threat to America right now comes from within.
According to that poll, 91% of attendees believe the greatest threat to America is “internal forces such as the Deep State, public education and the mainstream media,” while just 8% pointed to “external forces such as Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.”
The Political Insider reports that beyond the investigation of classified documents, the Justice Department is also investigating Trump as part of a criminal probe into “efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.”
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