House Republicans have set up numerous interviews in the coming weeks with Department of Justice officials as part of their inquiry into whether the department extended President Joe Biden’s son Hunter preferential treatment as it investigated him.
The interviews come as part of a request Chairmen Jim Jordan (R-OH), Jason Smith (R-MO), and James Comer (R-KY) made to the DOJ and IRS in June for 13 people to testify before Congress over their involvement in alleged “weaponization of federal law enforcement power” in the Hunter Biden case.
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Four of the interviews, two with FBI agents and two with IRS agents, have already taken place. Interviews for the seven others, who all work within DOJ, have either been scheduled or are in the process of being scheduled.
“We are still working with DOJ on finalizing these interviews and have numerous scheduled so far,” a committee spokesperson said Friday but declined to say which ones had been set.
Jordan, who will oversee the interviews, is aiming to speak with special counsel David Weiss, the lead prosecutor in the case, as well as Lesley Wolf, the assistant U.S. attorney under Weiss in Delaware. Wolf has been accused by whistleblowers of taking steps to obstruct federal investigators during their roughly five-year investigation into Hunter Biden.
Others on the list include the U.S. attorneys in Washington, D.C., and California, Matthew Graves and Martin Estrada, who whistleblowers and other witnesses have said refused to partner with Weiss when he wanted to bring charges against the first son in their jurisdictions.
The four interviews that have taken place so far have corroborated some allegations made by two IRS criminal investigators in May after they came to Congress with frustrations about what they perceived as abnormal activity that hindered their work on the Hunter Biden case.
Transcripts of the interviews, obtained by the Washington Examiner, aligned with the two whistleblowers’ allegations that the DOJ’s investigation moved noticeably slowly and that Graves and Estrada would not work with Weiss to bring charges against Hunter Biden.
Weiss has since charged the president’s son with illegal gun possession charges and is also expected to bring charges against him for failure to pay taxes in two separate years, but the whistleblower and witness testimony indicate more charges would have and still could be appropriate.
Jordan had also initially subpoenaed two of the seven remaining officials, both of whom worked within the DOJ’s Tax Division, but those depositions, which were scheduled for this week, did not take place.
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Jordan, the committee spokesperson indicated, has been involved in back-and-forth negotiations with the DOJ about the conditions under which he can interview its employees.
The negotiations likely include discussions about when department attorneys and personal attorneys can appear with employees for interviews, as well as what can fall within the scope of Jordan’s questioning during the interviews. The DOJ has long been opposed to allowing its employees, especially lower-level ones, to discuss any nonpublic information about ongoing investigations, which includes the one into Hunter Biden.
