Hunter Biden struck a deal with federal prosecutors last week, agreeing to plead guilty to two tax charges and likely avoiding jail time, but the drama over his investigation is just beginning.
At the end of last week, House Republicans unsealed testimony from two IRS officials who came forward as whistleblowers expressing concerns about how the investigation was handled by the Justice Department.
The testimony reveals that the investigation collapsed into bitter acrimony and finger-pointing, with these IRS officials repeatedly pressing for more aggressive action, while the DOJ prosecutors they worked with during both the Trump and Biden administrations counseled caution. The IRS team was sidelined and eventually removed from the case. The whistleblowers claim this was political retaliation, but there are also signs it was connected to concern over leaks to the Washington Post in October 2022.
Conflicts between agents and prosecutors over just how aggressive an investigation should be are not rare, though they became particularly charged in this case. And these IRS officials wanted to be very aggressive indeed, even pushing to interview President Biden’s grandchildren to quiz them about money Hunter had spent on them.
But the testimony also calls into question whether the investigation was truly independent. The probe was headed by the US attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, a Trump appointee who had been kept in place by Biden. Biden officials like Attorney General Merrick Garland touted Weiss’s independence to give the investigation credibility. Yet, in the IRS whistleblowers’ telling, US attorneys in California and the District of Columbia blocked Weiss from bringing charges in their districts, effectively hamstringing the investigation.
Garland denied these claims at a press conference Friday, saying Weiss had the authority “to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.” House Republicans aren’t buying…
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