House Republicans are suing two line prosecutors at the Justice Department’s Tax Division to enforce subpoenas compelling their testimony about the Hunter Biden investigation.
The House Judiciary Committee filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., requesting the appearance of DOJ tax officials Mark Daly and Jack Morgan.
“After DOJ refused to make Daly and Morgan available for voluntary interviews with the Committee, the Committee subpoenaed them to appear for depositions. But they defied the Subpoenas because their employer, DOJ, directed them not to appear,” the complaint reads.
IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, two IRS agents with years of experience on the Hunter Biden tax case, testified last year about a June 2022 meeting Daly and Morgan participated in which they considered potentially prosecuting Hunter Biden. The DOJ tax officials caught the IRS agents off guard by recommending against prosecuting Hunter Biden.
House Republicans highlighted the Justice Department’s obstruction of Morgan and Daly’s testimony in a lengthy report published last year, arguing that the testimony from Justice Department, FBI, and IRS officials confirmed central aspects of Shapley and Ziegler’s testimony. Senior DOJ tax-division official Stuart Goldberg and special counsel David Weiss were among the Justice Department officials who were cleared to testify.
Weiss is prosecuting Hunter Biden on nine tax-related charges for allegedly failing to pay over $1 million worth of taxes over tax years 2016–19. The younger Biden pleaded not guilty in January to the tax charges.
The IRS whistleblowers have alleged Hunter Biden committed tax crimes in Washington, D.C., during the 2014–15 tax years related to the income he received from Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings. Hunter Biden and his former business partner Devon Archer used a bank account called Rosemont Seneca Bohai to take in payments from Burisma during those two tax years totaling more than $80,000 per month each, bank records show. Hunter Biden used the Rosemont Seneca Bohai account to take his Burisma income in the form of supposed loans and failed to report his 2014 income on tax forms, Ziegler testified.
DOJ tax officials did not approve the 2014–15 tax charges he recommended at the June 2022 meeting, Ziegler recalled. The Judiciary Committee is demanding an injunction to permit Morgan and Daly to testify about the 2014–15 tax years and why they believed Hunter Biden should not face charges.
The statute of limitations expired on those alleged offenses after the U.S. Attorney for D.C. Matthew Graves declined to partner with Weiss on prosecuting Hunter Biden. Weiss is the U.S. Attorney for Delaware, and he was not special counsel at the time.
Graves testified last year and confirmed he declined to partner with Weiss after the IRS whistleblowers first brought attention to Graves’ conduct. Weiss himself confirmed Graves’s decision and the expiration of the statute of limitations for the 2014–15 tax years. The Judiciary Committee is also seeking testimony from Daly and Morgan on Graves’s choice not to prosecute Hunter Biden.
Graves is a Biden appointee and a lifelong Democrat.