The federal prosecutor overseeing the case against President Joe Biden’s son on Friday denied that he had been hamstrung by the Justice Department.
An IRS whistleblower has claimed that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss said he couldn’t bring charges against Hunter Biden outside of Delaware, contrary to statements from U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Weiss himself previously said in a letter to congressional Republicans that he has “ultimate authority” to bring charges against Hunter Biden in any jurisdiction, and he said Friday that this is still the case.
“I stand by what I wrote,” Weiss said in a letter to House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio). Weiss has not previously responded to the whistleblower allegation.
House Republicans have threatened to impeach Garland over the whistleblower claim, which they allege is more evidence that the Justice Department is biased against former President Donald Trump and protecting the Biden family.
But Weiss was appointed by Trump and kept on by Joe Biden so that he could continue his investigation into Hunter Biden, whom he charged last month with tax crimes in Delaware. The younger Biden has agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanors for failing to pay federal taxes and to enter a diversion program to head off a felony charge over illegal gun ownership.
Before the charges were brought, a supervisory special agent from the IRS criminal division named Gary Shapley claimed Weiss said during an October meeting that he couldn’t charge Biden in Washington, D.C., or California because the U.S. attorneys in those jurisdictions wouldn’t cooperate.
Republicans made Shapley’s testimony public after Weiss announced the Biden plea deal, which they described as a slap on the wrist.
Weiss said in his Friday letter that even if prosecutors in other states didn’t want to partner on the case, he had been “assured” that Garland would let him bring charges in Washington, California “or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.”
House Republicans this week asked Weiss, as well as other Justice Department and IRS officials, to sit for transcribed interviews about the Hunter Biden case, but Weiss said in his letter that he couldn’t provide details about the investigation. He denied that the Justice Department retaliated against Shapley.
Separately on Friday, Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell blasted Republicans for making Shapley’s testimony public and suggested that Shapley himself might have been under an internal investigation for misconduct.
“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,” Lowell said in a letter to House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.). “To any objective eye your actions were intended to improperly undermine the judicial proceedings that have been scheduled in the case.”