AP Photo/Susan Walsh
ED MORRISSEY | HotAir
And here we thought the State Department report on Joe Biden’s disgrace in Afghanistan was the long-holiday Friday night document dump. That turned out to only be an appetizer, however. US Attorney David Weiss, the man behind the very lenient and very convenient plea deal for Hunter Biden, finally responded to House Judiciary chair Jim Jordan’s demand for an answer to whistleblower accusations that he and Merrick Garland misled Congress on the extent of his authority and independence.
Weiss rebutted that claim by, er … admitting to it? Read for yourself:
https://twitter.com/ChuckRossDC/status/1674971372387291137?
Relevant portion transcribed below:
As the U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware, my charging authority is 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. 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 in the District of Columbia, the Central District of California, or any other district where charges could be brought in this matter.
That matches up a lot more closely to the claims from IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley et al than to what Merrick Garland told Congress and the public. A week ago, Garland insisted that Weiss had already been granted that kind of authority (via Twitchy, see note at end):
“As I said at the outset, Mr. [David] Weiss, who was appointed by President [Donald] Trump as the U.S. Attorney in Delaware and assigned this matter during a previous administration, would be permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to,” Garland said during a press conference at Justice Department headquarters about a crackdown on fentanyl precursors.
“I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution given that he has this authority,” Garland added. “He was given complete authority to make all decisions on his own.”
Apparently, that’s news to Weiss, who just told Jordan that he didn’t have that authority even now, let alone last October when he met with Shapley. That lines up with Shapley’s whistleblowing testimony, in which he claims that Weiss made clear in a meeting that he didn’t have final authority on charging decisions, and which others involved in the meeting and contemporaneous documentary evidence have corroborated. US Attorney for DC Michael Graves, a Biden appointee, refused to charge Hunter with any felonies. So did another US Attorney in central California, also appointed by Biden:
The next meeting was in person on October 7th, 2022, and it took place in the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office. This meeting included only senior-level managers from IRS CI, FBI, and the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office. This ended up being my red-line meeting in our investigation for me.
United States Attorney Weiss was present for the meeting. He surprised us by telling us on the charges, quote: “I’m not the deciding official on whether charges are filed,” unquote.
He then shocked us with the earth-shattering news that the Biden-appointed D.C. U.S. Attorney Matthew Graves would not allow him to charge in his district.
To add to the surprise, U.S. Attorney Weiss stated that he subsequently asked for special counsel authority from Main DOJ at that time and was denied that authority. Instead, he was told to follow the process, which was known to send U.S. Attorney Weiss through another President Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney.
This was troubling, because he stated that, if California does not support charging, he has no authority to charge in California. Because it had been denied, he informed us the government would not be bringing charges against Hunter Biden for the 2014-2015 tax years, for which the statute of limitations were set to expire in one month.
All of our years of effort getting to the bottom of the massive amounts of foreign money Hunter Biden received from Burisma and others during that period would be for nothing.
This point is critical. If Weiss actually had plenary charging authority as Garland claims, Hunter could have been charged with felonies just around the midterm elections (which took place on November 8, 2022, almost exactly a month after this meeting). Weiss couldn’t get either Biden-appointed US Attorney to partner with him on those charges, however. And either Weiss didn’t request Special Attorney status at that time, or Merrick Garland denied his request.
Instead, it looks like Weiss caved and cut a sweetheart plea deal to cut Hunter loose — and help keep the cover on the scandal through another election cycle.
Note well that this letter from Weiss also rebuts a new effort from Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell to claim that these aren’t actual whistleblowers and that their testimony is false. Power Line’s Scott Johnson dissects that effort:
Further executing his “best defense” strategy this week on Hunter Biden’s behalf, Lowell sent a wild 10-page letter to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith yesterday. The letter is posted online here. Lowell attacks congressional Republicans for their investigation of the Biden family business (that’s not how he puts it). He attacks the IRS whistleblowers whose testimony Smith released last week.
Lowell is all but swinging his arms in windmill fashion. He alleges, for example, that the Smith’s release of the transcripts “violated the spirit, if not the letter, of the tax laws and federal rules governing investigations[.]” So I take it that Smith didn’t violate any law releasing the transcripts.
The whistleblowers aren’t whistleblowers. They don’t understand the merits of the lenient deal Hunter Biden has arranged with prosecutors. They themselves are possibly guilty of illegal misconduct. And so on, and so on.
Scott has the response from Shapley’s attorneys too, which accuses Lowell of participating in an “intimidation” campaign. They make clear that Shapley et al will not get bullied:
These threats and intimidation have already been referred earlier this week to the inspectors general for DOJ and the IRS, and to Congress for further investigation as potential obstruction of their lawful inquiries as well as retaliation against our client.
It’s going to get tougher to keep up this offense while Weiss is stipulating to the facts in Shapley’s testimony. The next step is to get Merrick Garland under oath in a House hearing and force him to testify as to what authority Weiss actually had, when Weiss applied for §515 status (if he ever did), and why Garland has lied about Weiss’ status to the public and to Congress for the last two years. It might take a grant of immunity to Garland aides to force the truth out of the Department of Justice for their attempt to bury the Biden influence-peddling scandal — and to see just how high up the deceit and corruption actually go.
Original Here
