The Department of Justice is preventing two would-be whistleblowers from testifying in the Biden impeachment investigation, House Republicans claim in a report on the status of their investigation released Tuesday.
The 78-page report, issued by the House Judiciary, Ways and Means, and Oversight Committees, accuses the DOJ of stonewalling the congressional investigation into allegations that the Biden administration gave the president’s son special treatment while investigating his failure to pax federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018.
“The Justice Department has still not fully complied with requests for relevant documents, and it has impeded the Committees’ investigation by baselessly preventing two Tax Division officials — Senior Litigation Counsel Mark Daly and Trial Attorney Jack Morgan — from testifying, despite subpoenas compelling their testimony. These documents and this testimony are necessary for the Committees to complete our inquiry,” the report, first obtained by Politico, reads.
Earlier this year, two IRS whistleblowers — Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler — came forward alleging that the investigation into Biden’s taxes was throttled and politically influenced. In mid July, Shapley testified that then-U.S. attorney David Weiss said in a meeting with investigators that he had been denied special counsel status and was being blocked by his superiors from bringing charges against the younger Biden in the appropriate jurisdictions. Ziegler, a self-described “gay Democrat” and fellow investigator on the team, testified that he pushed Weiss to bring charges against Biden in the District of Columbia and Southern California, but that Weiss refused and said the decision was not his to make.
Weiss, who has since been named special counsel, denied that he made any such statement and has insisted that he was given the freedom to pursue the case as he saw fit.
Hunter’s legal team sued the IRS in September, claiming that the two whistleblowers “targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden” by revealing his confidential financial information in their public testimony.
Before being made special counsel in August, Weiss negotiated a plea deal with Hunter’s lawyers which would have allowed the president’s son to avoid jail time by pleading guilty to a pair of tax misdemeanors and entering into a deferred prosecution agreement on a gun charge related to his allegedly having lied on a federal background check form about his drug use.
The plea deal ultimately fell through after a federal judge pointed out that it was unprecedented in that would have also granted the younger Biden broad immunity from future charges related to his unregistered foreign lobbying work.
After the plea deal, which was blasted as a sweetheart arrangement by congressional Republicans, fell apart, Biden’s legal team said their client was ready to go to trial to fight the charges. Weiss is expected to bring the tax charges in Washington, D.C., or California.
“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,” House Republicans argue in the report. “When forced to act, the Biden Justice Department worked closely with Hunter Biden’s counsel to craft an unprecedented plea deal that was so biased in the direction of Hunter Biden it fell apart in open court. When a federal judge rejected the Department’s attempt to push through a sweetheart plea deal and quietly end the five-year investigation of Hunter Biden, Attorney General Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel and refused to answer questions about the case on the basis of the existence of an ‘ongoing investigation.'”
The report issued Tuesday is divided into three major sections focusing on the alleged “special treatment” Hunter Biden was afforded by DOJ officials, the question of whether Weiss was empowered with “ultimately authority” to indict the president’s son, and the broader attempt to “cover-up Hunter Biden’s wrongdoing.”
“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. Although the Committees’ investigation is far from complete, this interim report details the findings to date and summarizes some of the evidence uncovered in the impeachment inquiry,” the report reads.
The report comes ahead of a closed-door session before the Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday afternoon, where the whistleblowers are set to discuss information “protected under Internal Revenue Code Section 6103,” likely referring to confidential tax returns.