House Republicans seek records outlining the “scope” of Delaware’s U.S. Attorney David Weiss‘s special counsel investigation into Hunter Biden.
A trio of GOP chairmen sent a letter on Monday to Attorney General Merrick Garland requesting documents by next month while raising concerns about the years-long inquiry into the president’s adult son.
The lawmakers mentioned a number of issues stemming from whistleblower allegations, public statements about charging authority, the revelation of internal communications from Biden’s lawyers, and the collapse of a plea deal that led to the special counsel appointment after a judge took issue with the contours of an immunity provision.
“The Department pulled punches in this investigation, handicapping veteran investigators and preventing them from freely pursuing the facts,” the letter said. “The Department agreed to an apparently unprecedented plea deal with Hunter Biden after his attorneys threatened to call his father, President Biden, as a witness in the case.”
“Now you have appointed as special counsel an individual who oversaw all the investigation’s irregularities, who spent the past two months claiming that he did not need special counsel status, and who was responsible for the plea agreement that collapsed in court and is widely viewed as an embarrassment for the Department,” the letter added. “In light of Mr. Weiss’s record leading this investigation, we have concerns with his appointment as special counsel.”
The letter requested two types of records: all “documents and communications referring or relating to U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s appointment as special counsel” and any “additional scope memoranda, directives, or instructions from the Office of the Attorney General referring or relating to U.S. Attorney David Weiss’s appointment as special counsel.”
The lawmakers — Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH), Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY), and Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-MO) — set a deadline of 5 p.m. on September 11. They said the aim of the documents request is to “advance our oversight and inform potential legislative reforms.”
A Department of Justice (DOJ) spokesperson told The Daily Wire the agency had received the letter and declined to comment further.
DOJ leaders have pushed back against claims of politicization in the past. Earlier this month, after the failure of a plea agreement involving tax evasion and gun charges, Garland said that “extraordinary circumstances” led him to conclude it was in the public interest” to grant Weiss’s request a couple days prior for special counsel status — a designation that gives the prosecutor broader authority to bring charges outside of his own district.
Although Democrats in Congress have taken to the airwaves to defend the DOJ and the president, the findings of a recent ABC News/Ipsos survey found that a plurality of Americans lack confidence in the DOJ’s Hunter Biden inquiry.
