One day after Delaware U.S. Attorney-turned-Special Counsel David Weiss scolded Hunter Biden for baselessly requesting preferential treatment in his ongoing gun case, Republicans in the House released a report detailing how the Department of Justice treated President Joe Biden’s son with favoritism in the investigation into his alleged tax and gun crimes and then tried to cover it up.
Evidence uncovered by the House Judiciary Committee, Ways and Means Committee, and Oversight and Accountability Committee confirms that the DOJ slow-walked a federal tax crime inquiry into Hunter and “deviated from standard procedures” to protect the Bidens, with unprecedented actions like barring investigators from asking about any evidence that mentioned Joe such as the “big guy” or “dad.”
“The Department’s concerning actions and kid-glove treatment of Hunter Biden serves as yet another example of the two-tiered justice system at the Biden Justice Department,” the report concludes.
The findings aim to satisfy the third prong of the impeachment inquiry ordered by former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy in September, which asked if the Biden administration did anything to “slow, hamper, or otherwise impede the criminal investigation of the President’s son, Hunter Biden, which involves funds received by the Biden family from foreign sources.”
The committees determined from evidence and the testimonies of 10 federal officials including Weiss that both the DOJ and FBI hampered the criminal tax investigation of Hunter by interfering with IRS agents’ investigative protocol, cluing in the younger Biden to a surprise IRS interview in December 2020, and allowing the statute of limitations to expire “on the most serious potential charges.”
“These unusual—and oftentimes in the view of witnesses, unprecedented—tactics conflicted with standard operating procedures and ultimately had the effect of benefiting Hunter Biden,” the congressional investigators found.
The report’s findings corroborate testimony from several IRS whistleblowers who warned that the DOJ deliberately choked their investigation and charging recommendations for Hunter Biden because it didn’t want to damage Biden’s presidential chances.
“Several witnesses acknowledged the delicate approach used during the Hunter Biden case, describing the investigation as ‘sensitive’ or ‘significant,’” the report notes.
At the time, Weiss denied the DOJ’s meddling and claimed to have “ultimate authority” over the investigation. Weiss later declared that his charging authority “is geographically limited to my home district.”
Despite previous insistence under oath that Weiss possessed all of the authority he needed to properly charge Hunter, Attorney General Merrick Garland slyly admitted in a September congressional hearing that was not true.
Biden Justice Department officials told congressional investigators that Weiss could not bring charges without first getting the stamp of approval from other U.S. Attorneys and the Biden Justice Department’s Tax Division. It was “Biden Administration political appointees” who “exercised significant oversight and control over the investigation,” not Weiss, the committees found.
Documents suggest Hunter should have been charged with several tax felonies and misdemeanors for evading “millions of dollars in taxes.” Instead, the DOJ offered Hunter a sweetheart deal, for the apparent purpose of protecting his father’s political prospects.
“There is no question that without the brave IRS whistleblowers, it is likely that the Biden Justice Department would have never acted on Hunter Biden’s misconduct,” the report notes.
The DOJ, the report states, “attempted to cover-up Hunter Biden’s wrongdoing, as well as its own.” Garland’s decision to name Weiss special counsel after a judge called foul on the carefully orchestrated plea deal only confirmed the committee’s suspicions that the DOJ would do everything it could to disqualify the federal government’s Hunter Biden investigation from further scrutiny.
“Using the ‘ongoing investigation’ as a veil to shield its misconduct, the Biden Justice Department unilaterally limited the scope of witness testimony and document productions to Congress, severely curtailing the Committees’ ability to gather information,” the report states.
To this day, the committees say the DOJ “impeded the Committees’ investigation” into its handling of Hunter’s criminal case by refusing to hand over key documents and ignoring subpoenas demanding testimony from two Tax Division officials.
“The Department’s blatant disregard for the Committees’ constitutionally prescribed oversight responsibilities is yet another stain that the Biden Administration has placed on the Justice Department’s once-venerated reputation,” the report states.
The committees concluded by emphasizing their work “will continue despite the Biden Administration’s attempts to severely limit, obstruct, and curtail the Committees’ inquiry.” The Republicans expressed hope that the continued oversight will not only aid the impeachment inquiry but also ramp up congressional support for “strengthening laws protecting whistleblowers from retaliation, reforming the ‘special attorney’ statute, codifying the special counsel regulations, and reforming the Department’s Tax Division.”
The report comes one day after Weiss, in a letter rejecting Hunter’s demands to subpoena former President Donald Trump and former Attorney General Bill Barr in his gun charge case, said that the Biden son deserves no special treatment from the DOJ because he is not a publicly identified member of a “constitutionally protected class.”
This is not the first time Weiss tried to absolve himself and the DOJ of wrongdoing on behalf of the Bidens. Weiss promised the House Judiciary Committee in November that “political considerations played no part in our decisionmaking” about the investigation into Hunter.
“I’m not going to comment on any aspect of the investigation or a prosecution, and from my perspective, the prosecutors who participated in this case followed the law and the facts. That was the motivation,” he claimed.
As Federalist Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland wrote, Weiss’ “assurances that ‘political considerations played no part in our decisionmaking’ are meaningless.”
“This testimony establishes that Weiss has done nothing to review his team’s handling of the Hunter Biden investigation for possible political bias, notwithstanding the whistleblowers’ detailed claims of such favoritism,” Cleveland explained. “No wonder then that Weiss can say he has confidence in his prosecutors and believes they acted ‘in a professional and unbiased manner without partisan or political considerations’.”