The chairs of three House committees said Wednesday they are now investigating the government’s handling of its investigation into Hunter Biden, saying the president’s son was given kid-glove treatment.
The Judiciary, Ways and Means and Oversight and Accountability committees will all pursue leads as they try to assess allegations that the Justice Department and the IRS went easy on him.
“Politicization and misconduct at the Department of Justice and IRS during the investigation into Hunter Biden reveal a two-tiered system of justice and unequal application of the law,” said the chairs, Reps. James Comer of Kentucky, Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jason Smith of Missouri.
Their determination to investigate comes days after Mr. Smith released testimony from two IRS criminal investigators-turned-whistleblowers who said they built compelling cases against Mr. Biden, only to have it be sabotaged from within.
They said government officials tipped Mr. Biden’s lawyers off to what the investigators were pursuing, allowed Mr. Biden to run out the clock on the statute of limitations for some charges, and ended up cutting a lenient deal that allows the president’s son to plead to two tax misdemeanors and likely walk away with no jail time.
Among the allegations levied by the agents is that the U.S. attorney tasked with leading the Hunter Biden investigation sought special counsel status to be able to bring charges more freely, but the request was shot down.
That contradicts the assertions of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
The agents said they’ve had disagreements with prosecutors before — that’s the nature of give-and-take between investigators and trial lawyers — but they said what they experienced in the Biden probe broke all precedent for protecting the subject of an investigation.
Among the tantalizing details the agents revealed was one WhatsApp message they recovered from Mr. Biden’s iCloud account and which one of the agents read into the record of his testimony to the Ways and Means Committee.
The 2017 message from Hunter Biden to a Chinese business associate included Mr. Biden using his father as a threat to prod action.
That challenges President Biden’s assertions that his activities were divorced from those of his wayward son.
In addition to the House Republicans, Sen. Lindsey Graham, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, fired off a letter to Mr. Garland on Wednesday demanding he answer for whether he hamstrung the probe.
“To the American people, it appears DOJ had its thumb on the scale of justice,” the South Carolina lawmaker wrote.
