Special counsel David Weiss, who has led the investigation and prosecution of President Joe Biden‘s son, Hunter Biden, will provide rare but limited testimony to the Republican-led House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.
Weiss will sit for a closed-door transcribed interview with both Republican and Democratic members of the committee at 10 a.m. EST Tuesday, marking an especially unique moment for House investigators, as special counsels typically cannot testify while a criminal investigation is ongoing.
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House committee members are prepared to interview Weiss, a Donald Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware before his appointment as special counsel in August, about the extent of his authority in the Hunter Biden case, a source familiar with the matter told the Washington Examiner. His appearance comes amid allegations that politicization impeded prosecutorial decisions in the years since the investigation began in 2018.
IRS agent Joseph Ziegler and supervisory special agent Gary Shapley alleged that the Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in California and Washington, D.C., impeded Weiss’s ability to bring charges against the younger Biden in each of their respective jurisdictions. The two U.S. attorneys acknowledged in interviews with the Judiciary Committee that they refused to partner with Weiss on the case, but they testified that they did not believe their decisions blocked Weiss from bringing charges outside Delaware. Attorneys for the two IRS whistleblowers contend that merely declining to partner with Weiss amounted to blocking him from moving forward with the case outside his district due to Justice Department rules.
Weiss himself will also be there to “make clear” he’s had full authority of the investigation since the beginning, his spokesman Wyn Hornbuckle told the Washington Examiner.
“Special Counsel Weiss is appearing voluntarily to testify before the House Judiciary Committee about the scope of his authority,” said Hornbuckle. “Mr. Weiss is prepared to take this unprecedented step of testifying before the conclusion of his investigation to make clear that he’s had and continues to have full authority over his investigation and to bring charges in any jurisdiction.”
Hornbuckle confirmed that Weiss’s testimony would be limited due to the open investigation into the first son. The spokesman added that Weiss will prepare a report, which Garland has “committed to making public to the greatest extent possible.”
Weiss was prepared to drop a felony gun charge this summer in exchange for a guilty plea from Hunter Biden on two tax misdemeanors. But Hunter Biden withdrew from the plea deal in late July after prosecutors didn’t agree with defense attorneys that the plea deal would broadly shield Hunter Biden from further prosecution.
Weiss is likely to face questions about the plea deal.
One month after the deal collapsed in court, Weiss was named special counsel. His first move was to charge Hunter Biden with three federal gun charges related to lying about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for roughly 11 days. Lawmakers may seek further insight as to why it took five years to prosecute Biden for gun charges, or why he allowed the statute of limitations to expire for alleged misconduct that occurred during the 2014 and 2015 tax years.
Weiss will likely be asked why or why not Hunter Biden was or wasn’t charged for certain alleged offenses, such as the tax misdemeanors to which he initially intended to plead guilty, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Shapley has testified that a federal prosecutor on the Hunter Biden investigation, Lesley Wolf, attempted to stop investigators from questioning witnesses about the president, a point that lawmakers could raise with Weiss. Another line of questioning might focus on why Hunter Biden’s attorneys believed their client would gain full immunity from the plea deal.
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Testimony from Weiss comes amid House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry against the president. Republicans allege that Joe Biden was at one point improperly trying to help his son, who sat on the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company, when he pressured the Ukrainian government as vice president in the mid-2010s to fire the country’s prosecutor general.
Weiss could be asked why his deputy allegedly blocked a valid search warrant of a lobbying firm that represented the Ukrainian company in August 2020. At the time, the younger Biden’s investigation had expanded to include whether the lobbying firm’s U.S. activities violate foreign lobbying laws known as the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
