Republican senators are calling on Attorney General Merrick Garland to grant a prosecutor investigating President Joe Biden’s son special counsel authority.
A group of over 30 GOP senators wrote Garland a letter, first reported by Fox News, on Friday pushing for a special counsel to protect the ongoing Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation into Hunter Biden from politicization. The senators cited whistleblower accounts alleging that top officials at the FBI quashed concerning reports about the Biden scion prior to the 2020 election.
“[E]vidence seems to be mounting that Hunter Biden committed numerous federal crimes, including, but not limited to, tax fraud, money laundering, and foreign-lobbying violations,” the senators wrote. “Given that the investigation involves the President’s son, we believe it is important to provide U.S. Attorney [David] Weiss with special counsel authorities and protections to allow him to investigate an appropriate scope of potential criminal conduct, avoid the appearance of impropriety, and provide additional assurances to the American people that the Hunter Biden investigation is free from political influence.”
The lead signatories on the letter are Sens. John Cornyn of Texas, Chuck Grassley of Iowa, and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Grassley is the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee and has released a number of whistleblower reports alleging rampant politicization within the FBI. McConnell is the top Republican in the Senate.
The senators referenced Grassley’s whistleblower reports as supporting concerns that DOJ and FBI probes into Hunter Biden may be influenced by partisans within the government. The DOJ’s recent history of questionable calls since Garland took over has further sowed doubt about the department’s impartiality.
“Given the politicization of the DOJ under your watch and the importance of avoiding any appearance of impropriety, the undersigned request that you provide U.S. Attorney Weiss the full protections and authorities of a special counsel. This is one important action you can take that will go a long way in restoring faith in our governmental institutions,” the letter said.
Biden announced in December 2020, about a month after the 2020 election, that the DOJ had launched an investigation into his “tax affairs.”
“I take this matter very seriously but I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors,” he said in a statement.
In several accounts of whistleblower reports, Grassley and another GOP senator, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, have said that FBI agents claimed top officials at the bureau took steps to bury probes into Biden’s affairs, which include overseas business dealings in countries such as China and Ukraine, before the 2020 election. In one account, Johnson relayed allegations from whistleblowers that FBI officials explicitly barred agents from probing Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop after the bureau received it in 2019.
“After the FBI obtained the Hunter Biden laptop from the Wilmington, DE computer shop, these whistleblowers stated that local FBI leadership told employees, ‘you will not look at that Hunter Biden laptop,’” Johnson wrote in an August letter to Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz.