An FBI special agent who appeared before the House Judiciary Committee last week testified that the Department of Justice’s investigation of Hunter Biden moved noticeably slowly, an observation that aligns with testimony a pair of IRS criminal investigators gave to Congress in May.
Thomas Sobocinski, an FBI special agent in charge at the Baltimore Field Office, told the committee in a behind-closed-doors interview, “I would have liked for it to move faster,” according to a full transcript of the interview obtained by the Washington Examiner.
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Sobocinski also repeatedly expressed to the committee that his focus in the Hunter Biden case was “moving it forward to a resolution,” though he did not specify what that resolution involved.
Sobocinski, who was accompanied in the interview by both a DOJ and FBI lawyer, largely avoided answering most questions Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) and committee staff posed to him.
In the interview, Jordan and his staff repeatedly asked, for instance, if Sobocinski had any recollections about concerns with the statute of limitations running out before now-special counsel David Weiss, the lead prosecutor in the case, could bring charges against Biden for tax crimes he may have committed in 2014 and 2015.
“I’m going to be consistent. I’m not going to talk about the deliberative discussions we had on — which is now — which is an open investigation, which I’m still leading, and I still have a team that’s out there doing this to move this forward,” Sobocinski said.
At one point, Sobocinski also referred to the tax crimes as outside of his purview, saying, “Without addressing that question directly, as the FBI, IRS tax charges are not — those are not my violations that I was investigating. So I’m not in a position to discuss the minutia of that.”
Weiss charged Biden in June with two misdemeanors for failing to pay taxes in 2017 and 2018 and a felony gun charge.
Also during the testimony, Sobocinski confirmed he was present at two key meetings, one on June 15, 2022, and one on Oct. 7, 2022, that were raised by the IRS criminal agents-turned-whistleblowers when they testified to Congress in May.
The whistleblowers said the Oct. 7 meeting was a breaking point for them after they had spent years working in coordination with the FBI to investigate alleged tax crimes by Biden. They indicated that after that meeting, they were convinced that senior officials at the DOJ were hindering their work to protect Biden.
Sobocinski would not answer questions about the substance of either the June or October meeting, according to the transcript.
The whistleblowers had said that based on their notes from the October meeting, Weiss conveyed that he did not have the authority he needed to bring the charges he wanted against Biden. Sobocinski said he did not recall that coming up and that he always believed Weiss had the authority he needed, but he later noted that there may have been an “administrative process” Weiss needed to go through.
“It was my understanding he had the authority to bring whatever he needed to do,” Sobocinski said at one point. “There was administrative charge — or administrative process, not within DOJ, but also within tax. I don’t know the intricacies of that, but it definitely seemed very cumbersome.”
Sobocinski’s testimony came just ahead of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) announcing on Tuesday that House Republicans would begin an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over allegations he was inappropriately involved in his son’s foreign business dealings.
Part of the inquiry, McCarthy said, would be investigating if Hunter Biden received “special treatment” from the DOJ.
Sobocinski was one of 13 people Jordan and two other chairmen, Reps. James Comer (R-KY) and Jason Smith (R-MO), have said they are interested in speaking with as part of their investigation into the alleged “special treatment” of Hunter Biden.
In addition to Sobocinski, three others from the list of 13 had recent appearances scheduled with Congress. Ryeshia Holley, another special agent from the Baltimore Field Office who worked closely with Sobocinski, was set to testify on Sept. 11, according to the transcript.
IRS Director of Field Operations Michael Batdorf met last week with the House Ways and Means Committee, a committee aide confirmed. Darrell Waldon, IRS special agent in charge, was scheduled to testify this week.
Judiciary Committee ranking member Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) contended that Sobocinski’s testimony contradicted that of the IRS whistleblowers, saying in a statement on social media, “Only hours after Republicans launched their impeachment stunt it’s already falling apart as the stories of two of their ‘whistleblowers’ start to unravel.”
Empower Oversight, a legal entity representing Gary Shapley, one of the IRS whistleblowers, said in a statement about revelations of Sobocinski’s testimony, “Unfortunately, we haven’t seen the leaked transcript, which makes it difficult to comment.”
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However, of what the group had seen of the testimony, Empower Oversight said, “While it’s not unusual for people to have slightly different recollections of the same event, in this case, SSA Shapley took notes in real-time and that day emailed his summary of the meeting to several people, including his supervisor who contemporaneously corroborated his account—which is all very different from trying to recall information a year later with no notes.”
A Judiciary Committee spokesperson said the IRS whistleblowers “have been wholly consistent throughout their disclosures to Congress, and the only people who haven’t are people like David Weiss, Merrick Garland, and their liberal cronies.”
