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House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) shared what he called a “key takeaway” from Tuesday’s testimony by special counsel David Weiss, the federal prosecutor who spent years investigating allegedly nefarious foreign business dealings involving Hunter Biden.
The Daily Wire reported that Weiss told lawmakers that he requested but never received special attorney authority that would have given him the power to bring charges against Hunter outside of his jurisdiction in Delaware last year without having to partner with the local U.S. attorney, a top congressional investigator said.
Jordan said that statement, which belies how Weiss “pretends that somehow he did have that” authority, was “the key takeaway” from the transcribed interview the special counsel did on Tuesday after negotiations with the Department of Justice.
“He won’t answer a lot of questions. But that’s the key takeaway, because this whole deposition was about the changing story we got from DOJ, regarding the authority that he had,” Jordan said, according to a post to the X platform by House Judiciary Republicans.
The Daily Wire adds:
Jordan also said the testimony is “consistent” with claims made by Internal Revenue Service (IRS) supervisory special agent Gary Shapley, who asserts that Weiss — when he was solely a U.S. attorney from Delaware — told investigators during an October 2022 meeting that he was not the “deciding person” when it came to charges.
“At no time was I blocked, or otherwise prevented from pursuing charges or taking the steps necessary in the investigation by other United States Attorneys, the Tax Division or anyone else at the Department of Justice,” Weiss told the committee.
Judiciary ranking member Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said Weiss “was very clear that no one told him what to prosecute and what not to prosecute,” per The Washington Post. “He made all those decisions himself, and he said that before. And I mean, [Republicans] tried to get him to say anything, but they just go over and over and over again the same thing.”
After a plea bargain collapsed under scrutiny from a federal judge, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland gave Weiss special counsel status in August, which provided him with wider authority to bring charges against the first sone outside of his Delaware district. In September, a federal grand jury indicted Hunter Biden on gun charges, to which he pleaded not guilty. He could also face an indictment on tax evasion charges, all of which were part of the initial plea deal.
Still, it’s been difficult for the GOP-led House committee’s investigators to find out exactly what transpired during the course of the years-long investigation, The Daily Wire noted.
“Shapley, joined by fellow IRS agent Joseph Ziegler in coming forward as a whistleblower, brought forth allegations that the criminal inquiry into Biden that the DOJ slow-walked the inquiry in a way that may have precluded other serious charges due to the statute of limitations,” the outlet reported.
“Once again, Shapley and Ziegler’s testimony continues to stand up to every single witness we brought in for an interview,” Jordan said on Tuesday.
Withdrawing nearly $40,000 from his daughter’s college fund and failing to report it as additional income on his 2019 returns prompted the Internal Revenue Service to consider filing felony tax charges against first son Hunter Biden, who still used much of the windfall to pay for crack cocaine and hookers.
Ziegler testified before the House Ways and Means Committee last month that Hunter, now 53, stole “approximately $39,820” from his daughter Maisy’s 529 college savings plan when she was a high school student.
According to his memoir “Beautiful Things,” Hunter hid out in a hotel to smoke crack after evading a family intervention a few weeks earlier.
“After liquidating Maisy’s college savings, he went even deeper into the throes of his addiction in the coming months, sending payments to his drug dealer, a webcam service, and prostitutes in the following weeks, emails on his laptop show,” the New York Post reported.
The IRS also found “personal distributions he had claimed as business deductions totaling approximately $12,791,” according to Ziegler’s affidavit to the House panel on the five-year federal probe into the first son’s finances.
Federal prosecutors pursued a misdemeanor tax count for failing to pay $22,860 in taxes despite receiving recommendations for felony charges for the $52,611 in unreported income.
