The Department of Justice (DOJ) intervened on behalf of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss to respond to congressional inquiries related to its probe into the Biden family business, emails unearthed from a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit show.
The collaboration raises questions about if Weiss’ responses to congressional investigators were under the direction of the DOJ and if Weiss and the DOJ colluded to mislead Congress.
Did the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs respond to Sens. Chuck Grassley and Ron Johnson’s May 9, 2022, letter seeking information concerning the Hunter Biden investigation? Weiss posed that question to one of his lead assistant U.S. attorneys, Shannon Hanson.
“Not to my knowledge,” Hanson replied, followed soon after with a second email noting that Joe Gaeta, the then-deputy assistant attorney general in the Office of Legislative Affairs, was working on a response. And although Grassley and Johnson had addressed their May 9, 2022, inquiry solely to Weiss, DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs would intercede on his behalf, responding in a letter dated June 9, 2022, that the DOJ would not respond to the questions posed.
The following month, Grassley and Johnson dispatched another letter requesting information related to the Hunter Biden investigation, addressing this letter to Weiss, as well as Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Again, the Office of Legal Counsel intervened, telling Weiss’s office in an email reviewed by The Federalist that it would “take the lead on drafting a response” to Grassley and Johnson’s letter.
“It is standard procedure for congressional inquiries to be routed through the agency’s legislative affairs shop,” Kash Patel, a former federal public defender and House Intelligence Committee aide, told Breitbart News.
“What is not standard,” Patel continued, is for the DOJ to create “conspiratorial schemes concocted to subvert valid constitutional oversight and stonewall documentation production.”
“It also shows how Republicans allow themselves to be dominated by DOJ’s criminal conduct by flailing about with another strongly worded letter,” Patel added. “Impeach them for breaking the law, or stop complaining when you get punched in the face.”
Weiss told House investigators on June 7 that he had “ultimate authority” in whether to charge Hunter Biden with potential wrongdoing.
However, FOIA emails show that while Attorney General Merrick Garland claimed Weiss was the sole authority to bring charges against Hunter Biden, Garland was also controlling the flow of responses back to House investigators.
IRS whistleblowers contradict Garland’s claim. In a May 26 deposition, IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley told the Ways and Means Committee that Weiss stated during an October 7, 2022, meeting with DOJ and IRS officials that “he [Weiss] is not the deciding person on whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden. In addition, Shapley testified that Weiss’s efforts to bring charges in multiple jurisdictions were denied.
To ascertain if Weiss had full authority to charge Hunter Biden, House Republicans subpoenaed four senior IRS and FBI officials who reportedly heard Weiss say he would not be given special counsel authority and was blocked from charging the president’s son outside Delaware.
“Americans deserve to know the truth, especially now that Attorney General Garland has appointed as special counsel the same U.S. Attorney who oversaw Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal and botched the investigation into his alleged tax crimes,” House Ways and Means Chair Jason Smith (R-MO) and Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) wrote.
The whistleblower allegations were also partially corroborated in June by the New York Times, which independently confirmed the DOJ prevented Weiss from bringing charges against Hunter Biden in Washington, DC, and California.
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal with the Justice Department fell apart in July under scrutiny from a Delaware judge. The judge dismissed the plea deal on August 17. Prosecutors expect the case to go to trial, where it will likely be tried in Delaware or California.
The agreement would have afforded Hunter Biden the ability to plead guilty for not paying taxes on more than $1.5 million in income in 2017 and 2018, receiving probation rather than jail time. Weiss devised a separate diversion agreement that gave Hunter Biden immunity from potential future charges, including a provision to essentially wipe a felony gun violation from his record.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
