Special counsel David Weiss’ office is pressing U.S. District Judge Otis Wright II to keep Alexander Smirnov in jail, arguing the man who claims to have ties to Russian intelligence is likely to flee the country.

A different judge last week released Smirnov from jail on electronic GPS monitoring, but Wright ordered the man to be re-arrested after prosecutors asked to reconsider Smirnov’s detention. Wright said in a written order that Smirnov’s lawyers’ efforts to free him was “likely to facilitate his absconding from the United States.”

In an emergency petition with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, Smirnov’s lawyers said Wright did not have the authority to order Smirnov to be re-arrested. The defense also criticized what it described as “biased and prejudicial statements” from Wright insinuating that Smirnov’s lawyers were acting improperly by advocating for his release.

Smirnov is charged with falsely telling his FBI handler that executives from the Ukrainian energy company Burisma had paid President Biden and Hunter Biden $5 million each around 2015. The claim became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry of President Biden in Congress.

In urging the judge to keep Smirnov locked up, prosecutors said the man has reported to the FBI having contact with Russian intelligence-affiliated officials. Prosecutors wrote in court filings last week that Smirnov told investigators after his first arrest that officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story to him about Hunter Biden.

Smirnov, who holds dual Israeli-U.S. citizenship, is charged by the same Justice Department special counsel who has separately filed gun and tax charges against Hunter Biden.

Smirnov has not entered a plea to the charges, but his lawyers have said they look forward to defending him at trial. Defense attorneys have said in pushing for his release that he has no criminal history and has strong ties to the United States, including a longtime significant other who lives in Las Vegas.

In his ruling last week releasing Smirnov on GPS monitoring, U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts in Las Vegas said he was concerned about his access to what prosecutors estimate is $6 million in funds, but noted that federal guidelines required him to fashion “the least restrictive conditions” ahead of his trial.

Smirnov had been an informant for more than a decade when he made the explosive allegations about the Bidens in June 2020, after “expressing bias” about Joe Biden as a presidential candidate, prosecutors said. Smirnov had only routine business dealings with Burisma starting in 2017, according to court documents. No evidence has emerged that Joe Biden acted corruptly or accepted bribes in his current role or previous office as vice president.

While his identity wasn’t publicly known before the indictment, Smirnov’s claims have played a major part in the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Republicans pursuing investigations of the Bidens demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the unverified allegations, though they acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if they were true.

___

Richer reported from Boston.

Prosecutors revealed the alleged contact as they urged a judge to keep Alexander Smirnov behind bars while he awaits trial. He’s accused of falsely telling his handler that executives with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each around 2015. The claim became central to the Republican impeachment inquiry in Congress.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Daniel Albregts allowed Smirnov to be released from custody on electronic GPS monitoring while he awaits trial. He must stay in Clark County, Nevada, and is prohibited from applying for a new passport.

Prosecutors said Smirnov, 43, admitted during an interview after his arrest last week that “officials associated with Russian intelligence were involved in passing a story” about Hunter Biden. They said Smirnov’s contacts with Russian officials were recent and extensive, and said Smirnov had planned to meet with one official during an upcoming overseas trip.

Smirnov has been in custody at a facility in rural Pahrump, about an hour’s drive west of Las Vegas, since his arrest last week at the airport while returning from overseas.

Defense attorneys David Chesnoff and Richard Schonfeld said in a statement they asked for Smirnov’s release while he awaits trial “so he can effectively fight the power of the government.”

The White House didn’t immediately comment on the claims in Tuesday’s court filing.

Prosecutors say Smirnov, who holds dual U.S.-Israeli citizenship, falsely reported to the FBI in June 2020 that executives associated with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma paid Hunter and Joe Biden $5 million each in 2015 or 2016.

Smirnov in fact had only routine business dealings with the company starting in 2017 and made the bribery allegations after he “expressed bias” against Joe Biden while he was a presidential candidate, prosecutors said in court documents. He is charged with making a false statement and creating a false and fictitious record. The charges were filed in Los Angeles, where he lived for 16 years before relocating to Las Vegas two years ago.

Smirnov’s claims have been central to the Republican effort in Congress to investigate the president and his family, and helped spark what is now a House impeachment inquiry into Biden. Democrats called for an end to the probe after the indictment came down last week, while Republicans distanced the inquiry from Smirnov’s claims and said they would continue to “follow the facts.”

Hunter Biden is expected to give a deposition next week.

The Burisma allegations became a flashpoint in Congress as Republicans pursuing investigations of President Biden and his family demanded the FBI release the unredacted form documenting the allegations. They acknowledged they couldn’t confirm if the allegations were true.

__

Whitehurst reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Alanna Durkin Richer in Boston contributed to this report.

In pressing for the case against President Joe Biden’s son to proceed, prosecutors said “the strength of the evidence against him is overwhelming” and pushed back against Hunter Biden’s claims that he is being singled out for political purposes.

In addition to “incriminating statements” Hunter Biden made about his drug use in his 2021 memoir, investigators found a white powdery substance on the brown leather pouch he used to store the gun after pulling it from the state police vault last year, prosecutors wrote. An FBI chemist determined it was cocaine, they said.

“To be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun,” prosecutors said.

Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of lying about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for about 11 days. He has acknowledged struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine during that period in 2018, but his lawyers have said he didn’t break the law. Hunter Biden has since said that he’s stopped using drugs and has worked to turn his life around.

His attorneys didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment on the prosecutors’ filing Tuesday.

These criminal proceedings could have been avoided with a plea deal last year, but an agreement with federal prosecutors fell apart and now the president’s son is facing the spectacle of a trial this year while his father is campaigning. He was indicted after the plea deal broke down when a judge who was supposed to sign off on the agreement instead raised a series of questions about the deal.

He had initially agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and would have also avoided prosecution on the gun charges had he stayed out of trouble for two years. It was the culmination of a yearslong investigation by federal prosecutors into the business dealings of the president’s son.

His lawyers have urged the judge to dismiss the gun case, alleging he was “selectively charged” for improper political purposes. They have argued that special counsel David Weiss — who also serves as U.S. attorney for Delaware and was originally appointed by former President Donald Trump — “buckled under political pressure” to bring more severe charges amid criticism of the deal from Trump and other Republicans.

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Prosecutors, however, said there is no evidence “to support his allegation that the Executive Branch, led by his father, President Biden, and its Justice Department, led by the Attorney General appointed by his father, authorized prosecution by the U.S. Attorney and Special Counsel of their choosing for an ‘improper political purpose.’”

“The charges in this case are not trumped up or because of former President Trump — they are instead a result of the defendant’s own choices and were brought in spite of, not because of, any outside noise made by politicians,” prosecutors wrote.

Hunter Biden’s criminal proceedings are also happening in parallel to so far unsuccessful efforts by congressional Republicans to link his business dealings to his father. Republicans are pursuing an impeachment inquiry into President Biden, claiming he was engaged in an influence-peddling scheme with his son. But House Republicans on Tuesday halted plans to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for defying a congressional subpoena in their ongoing investigation, citing negotiations with his attorneys that could end the standoff.

No evidence has emerged so far to prove that the president, in his current or previous office, abused his role or accepted bribes, though questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family’s international business dealings.

Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty Thursday in Los Angeles during a hearing on the federal tax charges filed against him last month.

A trial date was set for June 20 in Los Angeles.

President Joe Biden’s son entered the plea to nine tax-related charges during his initial court appearance in federal court in downtown Los Angeles.

The 53-year-old Biden, who has a residence in Malibu, was charged with three felony and six misdemeanor counts in the 56-page indictment. He could face up to 17 years in prison, if convicted on all charges.

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He is accused in the indictment of failing to pay taxes, failing to file, evading an assessment and filing a fraudulent form.

“According to the indictment, Hunter Biden engaged in a four-year scheme in which he chose not to pay at least $1.4 million in self-assessed federal taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019 and to evade the assessment of taxes for tax year 2018 when he filed false returns,” special counsel and U.S. Attorney David Weiss‘ office said in a news release when the charges were filed.

Hunter Biden eventually filed taxes in 2020 with back taxes paid by a “third party” the following year, prosecutors said.

Weiss was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland, a move that gives him increased authorities in overseeing the federal investigation into Biden. A special counsel is usually appointed to handle cases that the Justice Department perceives itself as having a conflict or where it’s deemed to be in the public interest to have someone outside the government lead the process.

The inquiry into Hunter Biden’s business dealings has so far not uncovered evidence directly implicating the president in wrongdoing connected to his son’s activities. Biden attorney Abbe Lowell has said the prosecution overseen by Weiss, a U.S. Attorney’s Office appointee of former President Trump, is politically motivated.

The indictment on tax-related charges alleges that Biden “spent this money on drugs, escorts and girlfriends, luxury hotels and rental properties, exotic cars, clothing, and other items of a personal nature, in short, everything but his taxes.”

The indictment, which does not appear to mention President Biden, claims that Biden misled accountants into filing tax returns that had items marked as business expenses when he allegedly was not doing business at the time.

Biden was previously expected to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges as part of a plea deal with prosecutors, but that agreement was dropped in July after a judge raised questions. In exchange for pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax evasion charges, Biden would have received two years of probation rather than jail time.

U.S. District Judge Mark C. Scarsi, appointed by former President Donald Trump, presided over Thursday’s hearing.

Thursday’s court appearance comes a day after Biden’s surprise appearance on Capitol Hill, where Republicans were taking the first step to hold him in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena. Biden sat with his legal team, including Lowell, in the audience at the Overnight Committee meeting.

One member of the panel, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina, demanded that Biden be arrested. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called Biden a coward as he left.

That committee and the Judiciary committee are set to vote on contempt resolutions. Members recommended he be held in contempt for not complying with a subpoena to sit for a closed-door deposition as part of the panel’s impeachment inquiry into President Biden.

Hunter Biden has said he’s willing to testify publicly, but not behind closed doors.

Biden also was indicted on federal gun charges in September in Delaware. He pleaded not guilty in that case.

Also Thursday, closing arguments are scheduled in the civil business fraud trial of former President Trump, two of his sons and their company, the Trump Organization.

The House Oversight and Judiciary committees each passed contempt charges against the younger Biden with unanimous Republican support and all Democrats opposed. The action sets up a House vote on recommending criminal charges against a member of President Joe Biden’s family as the GOP moves into the final stages of an impeachment inquiry into the president himself.

If the House votes to hold Hunter Biden in contempt, it will be up to the Department of Justice, specifically the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, to decide whether to prosecute.

It’s the latest step for the inquiry, which began in September, but has so far failed to uncover evidence directly implicating the president in wrongdoing involving his son’s business dealings.

Hunter Biden has defended his lack of compliance with the GOP-issued subpoena, which ordered him to appear for closed-door testimony in mid-December. Biden and his attorneys said information from private interviews can be selectively leaked and manipulated by House Republicans and insisted that he would only testify in public.

The arrival of the president’s son at the Oversight Committee, which has been engaged in a yearlong probe, sitting in the audience with his legal team, including attorney Abbe Lowell, sent the panel into chaos.

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Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina insisted that Hunter Biden be quickly arrested. GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called him a coward as he left during her remarks. Democratic lawmakers argued that Biden, who has refused to testify to the panel behind closed doors, should be allowed to speak publicly.

Committee Chairman James Comer struggled to regain control. “Mr. Biden doesn’t make the rules, we make the rules,” he said.

Hunter Biden and his attorneys left the committee room shortly after, making a brief statement to reporters outside. Lowell reiterated Wednesday that, unlike the president, his client “was and is a private citizen.”

“Despite this, Republicans have sought to use him as a surrogate to attack his father,” he said. “And, despite their improper partisan motives, on six different occasions, since February of 2023, we have offered to work with the House committees to see what and how relevant information to any legitimate inquiry could be provided.”

Hunter Biden’s only remarks to reporters were when asked why he had his father on speaker phone several times during business meetings. “If he called you, would you answer the phone?” he responded.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre also emphasized Wednesday that Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and she refused to say whether the White House was informed in advance of his surprise appearance on Capitol Hill.

“He makes his own decisions like he did today,” Jean-Pierre said.

If the contempt referral against Hunter Biden passes the full House it would be yet another challenge for federal prosecutors already under heavy scrutiny for their handling of charges against him related to his taxes and gun use.

Shelving the contempt of Congress charges would likely further stoke conservative criticism that the Justice Department is politicized — especially given that two one-time advisers to former President Donald Trump were prosecuted for contempt of Congress by the Biden administration. But prosecuting contempt cases can be difficult.

Further angering Republicans, Hunter Biden did come to the Capitol on the day specified by the subpoena — but not to testify. Instead, he stood behind microphones outside the U.S. Capitol complex — a couple hundred feet away from the awaiting GOP investigators — and delivered a rare public statement defending his business affairs and castigating the yearslong investigations into him and his family.

“There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen,” the president’s son said in those remarks.

He added, “There is no fairness or decency in what these Republicans are doing — they have lied over and over about every aspect of my personal and professional life — so much so that their lies have become the false facts believed by too many people.

Speaker Mike Johnson gave his stamp of approval Wednesday to the contempt process, saying that the House must uphold its subpoena power.

“We have to do this. This is our role. It’s our responsibility, ”the Louisiana Republican said during a press conference. But, he added, “we’re not taking any pleasure in this.”

The contempt resolution, released by Republicans on Monday, reads behavior has been “contemptuous, and he must be held accountable for his unlawful actions.”

While Republicans say their inquiry is ultimately focused on the president, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, questioning whether the president profited from that work.

Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations that there has been political interference in the long-running Justice Department investigation into Hunter Biden.

The committees’ votes Wednesday on contempt of Congress come a day before Hunter Biden is scheduled to make his first court appearance on tax charges filed by a special counsel in Los Angeles. He is facing three felony and six misdemeanor counts, including filing a false return, tax evasion, failure to file and failure to pay.

His lawyer has accused David Weiss, the special counsel overseeing the yearslong case, of “bowing to Republican pressure” by bringing the charges.

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro and AP writers Kevin Freking and Chris Megerian contributed to this report.

But there are 6 acres (2.4 hectares) that he bought in 2015 and co-owns with a longtime campaign contributor that he has treated differently, transferring his ownership to Farm Team Properties, a shell company he co-owns with his wife.

Interviews and records reviewed by The Associated Press provide new insights into the financial deal, which risks undercutting the force of some of Comer’s central arguments in his impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden. For months, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee and his Republican colleagues have been pounding Biden, a Democrat, for how his relatives traded on their famous name to secure business deals.

In particular, Comer has attacked some Biden family members, including the president’s son Hunter, over their use of shell companies that appear designed to obscure millions of dollars in earnings they received from shadowy middlemen and foreign interests.

Such companies typically exist only on paper and are formed to hold an asset, like real estate. Their opaque structures are often designed to help hide ownership of property and other assets.

The companies used by the Bidens are already playing a central role in the impeachment investigation, which is expected to gain velocity after House Republicans voted Wednesday to formally authorize the probe. The vote follows the federal indictment last week of Biden’s son Hunter on charges he engaged in a scheme to avoid paying taxes on his earnings through the companies.

But as Comer works to “deliver the transparency and accountability that the American people demand” through the GOP’s investigation, his own finances and relationships have begun to draw notice, too, including his ties to prominent local figures who have complicated pasts not all that dissimilar to some of those caught up in his Biden probe.

Comer declined to comment through a spokesman but has aggressively denied any wrongdoing in establishing a shell company.

After Democrats blasted him for being a hypocrite following the Daily Beast’s disclosure of the company last month, Comer countered by calling a Democratic lawmaker a “smurf” and saying that the criticism was the kind of thing “only dumb, financially illiterate people pick up on.”

The AP found that Farm Team Properties functions in a similarly opaque way as the companies used by the Bidens, masking his stake in the land that he co-owns with the donor from being revealed on his financial disclosure forms. Those records describe Farm Team Properties as his wife’s “land management and real estate speculation” company without providing further details.

It’s not clear why Comer decided to put those six acres in a shell company, or what other assets Farm Team Properties may hold. On his most recent financial disclosure forms, Comer lists its value as being as much as $1 million, a substantial sum but a fraction of his overall wealth.

After this story first published Thursday, Comer responded during an appearance on FOX News, stating that Farm Team Properties “has five different assets and lots of revenue.” He didn’t reveal what those other assets may be. He also falsely claimed that the donor, Darren Cleary, “wasn’t a campaign contributor” at the time the property was purchased. Cleary and his family have donated to Comer’s political campaigns since at least 2010, records show.

Ethics experts say House rules require members of Congress to disclose all assets held by such companies that are worth more than $1,000.

“It seems pretty clear to me that he should be disclosing the individual land assets that are held by” the shell company, said Delaney Marsco, a senior attorney who specializes in congressional ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center in Washington.

Marsco and other experts were perplexed as to why Comer would place such assets in a shell company, especially since he disclosed his other holdings and does not appear to have taken other efforts to hide his wealth.

“This is actually a real problem that anti-corruption activists would love to get legislative reform on,” said Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis who specializes in government ethics. “It is hard to trace assets held in shell companies. His is a good example.”

Comer created the company in 2017 to hold his stake in the six acres that he purchased two years earlier in a joint venture with Cleary, a campaign contributor and construction contractor from Monroe County, Kentucky, where the congressman was born and raised.

It’s not clear how Comer came to invest with Cleary, who did not respond to an interview request. They have offered mutual praise for each other over the years, including Comer having called Cleary “my friend” and “the epitome of a successful businessperson” from the House floor.

Cleary, his businesses and family have donated roughly $70,000 to Comer’s various campaigns, records show. He has also lauded Comer on social media for “For Fighting For Us Everyday” and has posted photos of the two on a golf course together.

At the time he and Comer entered their venture, Cleary was selling an acre of his family’s land to Kentucky so it could build a highway bypass near Tompkinsville, which was completed in 2020. He sold Comer a 50% stake for $128,000 in six acres he owned that would end up being adjacent to the highway.

Comer, a powerful political figure in this rural part of Kentucky, announced his bid for Congress days after purchasing the land.

Marketing materials described the land as “choice” property and play up its proximity to the bypass. The partnership sold off about an acre last year for $150,000, a substantial increase over its value when purchased, property records show.

Farm Team Properties has also become more valuable. On Comer’s financial disclosure forms, it has risen in value from between $50,000 and $100,000 in 2016 to between $500,001 and $1 million in 2022, records show.

As House Oversight Committee chairman, Comer has presented himself as a bipartisan ethics crusader only interested in uncovering the truth. As evidence, he has pointed to a long career as a state legislator and official who sought to build bridges with Democrats and to “clean up scandal, restore confidence, and crack down on waste, fraud, and abuse.”

Interviews with allies, critics and constituents, however, reveal a fierce partisan who has ignored wrongdoing by friends and supporters if they can help him advance in business and politics.

“The Jamie Comer I knew was light and sunshine and looking for common ground. Now he’s Nixonian,” said Adam Edelen, a former Democratic state auditor and friend, comparing the lawmaker to a disgraced former president who resigned from office amid the Watergate scandal.

In Comer’s telling, he is a man of self-made wealth who founded his first farm while still enrolled at Western Kentucky University and shrewdly invested in land.

After graduating in 1993, Comer got into the insurance business with Billy D. Polston, a family friend.

The two later had a falling out. When poor health prevented Polston from running for reelection as a state representative in 2000, Comer, then 27, took on Polston’s wife in the GOP primary, winning that race and the general election. For years, Comer took credit in interviews for defeating the ‘incumbent.”

Comer cut his teeth in the bare-knuckled machine politics of Monroe County, Kentucky, and knew how to win allies, according to those who knew him.

When he was barely out of high school, Comer was writing campaign checks to state politicians, including a $4,000 contribution to a Republican candidate for governor in 1990, followed by another check in 1991 for $1,050, according to campaign finance disclosures published in local news stories. Both contributions listed Comer’s occupation as “student.”

Comer followed in the footsteps of his paternal grandfather, Harlin Comer, who was a leading figure in local Republican politics, as well as a construction contractor and bank officer.

When Harlin Comer died in 1993, the 21-year-old Comer took over as chairman of the Monroe County GOP. A wave of indictments against local Republican office holders, some of whom helped launch Comer’s political career and became close friends, soon followed.

Mitchell Page and Larry Pitcock were among those charged in the sweep. Page, then the county’s chief executive, and Pitcock, the former county clerk, were sentenced in 1996 to 18 months in prison for tampering with a state computer database so that they and their families could avoid paying vehicle taxes.

Rather than turning on Pitcock and Page, Comer has remained close to the men. He praised Page on the House floor in 2020 for his “principled leadership.”

Page did not respond to a request for comment. Pitcock could not be reached at phone numbers listed to him.

Pitcock and his family members have donated about $9,000 to Comer’s political campaigns and held one of Comer’s first fundraisers when he ran to become state agriculture commissioner, records show. Comer dismissed questions about the propriety of having Pitcock sponsor a fundraiser for him, noting to CN2 News that it helped him raise nearly $60,000.

Comer eventually hired Pitcock’s son to work for him in the agriculture commissioner’s office, records show. Members of the Pitcock family have since attended a House Republican fundraiser with Comer in Washington and posed for photographs with him inside the U.S. Capitol.

In 2011, a voter fraud case roiled local politics and swept up Billy Proffitt, Comer’s longtime friend and former college roommate. Proffitt pleaded guilty in December 2011 and was sentenced to probation.

A few years later, Proffitt came to Comer’s defense from allegations that nearly derailed the future congressman’s political career. During the 2015 Republican primary for governor, a local blogger began posting about accusations that Comer had abused a college girlfriend.

Comer vehemently denied the allegations. And in the hopes of discrediting the stories, he leaked emails to a local paper that suggested a rival campaign had been coordinating the coverage with the blogger, according to The New York Times. The leak allegation may have discredited the other candidate, Hal Heiner, but ended up hurting Comer’s campaign.

The coverage angered the former girlfriend, Marilyn Thomas, who wrote a letter to the Louisville Courier-Journal in which she asserted that Comer had hit her and that their relationship had been “toxic.” She also told the newspaper that Comer became “enraged” in 1991 after he learned she had used his name on a form she submitted before receiving an abortion at a Louisville clinic.

Proffitt, however, told the newspaper that he had never seen Comer be abusive toward Thomas.

“That doesn’t sound like Jamie at all,” said Proffitt, using Comer’s nickname, adding that he had never heard about the allegations of Thomas getting an abortion.

Comer ended up losing the primary by 83 votes to Matt Bevin, who went on to win the general election. It was the only campaign that Comer has lost.

The lawmaker and Proffitt remain close friends and business associates.

Profitt’s family’s real estate company is spearheading the efforts to sell the land held by Farm Team Properties.

In a brief interview, Proffitt called the focus on Comer’s shell company “much ado about nothing,” adding that the lawmaker “is a loyal friend and a good man who comes from a really, really good family.”

The Democratic president’s son slammed the GOP-issued subpoena for the closed-door testimony, arguing that information from those interviews can be selectively leaked and manipulated.

“Republicans do not want an open process where Americans can see their tactics, expose their baseless inquiry, or hear what I have to say,” Hunter Biden said outside the Capitol in a rare public statement. “What are they afraid of? I am here.”

GOP Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, has said Republicans expect “full cooperation” with the private deposition. Comer and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who leads the House Judiciary Committee, told reporters later Wednesday that they will begin looking at contempt of Congress proceedings in response to Hunter Biden’s lack of cooperation.

“He just got into more trouble today,” Comer said.

For months, Republicans have pursued an impeachment inquiry seeking to tie President Joe Biden to his son’s business dealings, voting on Wednesday to formally authorize the House investigation.

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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the president was familiar with what his son would say. “I think that what you saw was from the heart, from his son,” she said. “They are proud of their son.”

Democrats have been united against the Republican impeachment push, saying it’s “an illegitimate exercise” merely meant to distract from GOP chaos and dysfunction.

“We are at a remarkable juncture for the U.S. House of Representatives,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight and Accountability Committee. “Because this is an impeachment inquiry where no one has been able to define what criminal or constitutional offense they’re looking for.”

But questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family’s international business, and lawmakers insist their evidence paints a troubling picture of “influence peddling” in their business dealings, particularly with clients overseas.

“There is no evidence to support the allegations that my father was financially involved in my business because it did not happen,” Hunter Biden said.

The White House has chalked up the whole process as a “partisan smear campaign” that Republicans are pushing ahead with “despite the fact that members of their own party have admitted there is no evidence to support impeaching President Biden.”

While Republicans have maintained that their impeachment inquiry is ultimately focused on the president himself, they have taken particular interest in Hunter Biden and his overseas business dealings, from which they accuse the president of personally benefiting. Republicans have also focused a large part of their investigation on whistleblower allegations of interference in the long-running Justice Department investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes and his gun use.

Hunter Biden is currently facing criminal charges in two states from the special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges last week, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over a three-year period.

House Republicans hoped the vote to formalize their investigation would help their legal standing when enforcing subpoenas to Biden family members.

“Mr. Biden’s counsel and the White House have both argued that the reason he couldn’t come for a deposition was because there wasn’t a formal vote for an impeachment inquiry,” Jordan told reporters. “Well, that’s going to happen in a few hours.”

He added, “And when that happens, we’ll see what their excuse is then.”

Democrats and the White House have defended the president and his administration’s cooperation with the investigation thus far, saying it has already made dozens of witnesses and a massive trove of documents available.

Congressional investigators have obtained nearly 40,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, dozens of hours of testimony from key witnesses, including several high-ranking Justice Department officials currently tasked with investigating Hunter Biden.

One of those Justice Department officials, Lesley Wolf, the assistant U.S. attorney for Delaware, is expected to arrive for a private deposition with lawmakers on Thursday, according to a person familiar with the negotiations, who was granted anonymity to discuss details that had not yet been made public.

Associated Press writer Lindsay Whitehurst contributed to this report.

His defense attorney argued the gun case should be tossed out because an appeals court has found the law violates the Second Amendment under new standards set by the Supreme Court. Abbe Lowell also contended the charges against Hunter Biden violated immunity provisions that prosecutors agreed to in a plea deal they abandoned after Republicans slammed it as a “sweetheart deal.”

“These charges are unprecedented, unconstitutional and violate the agreement the U.S. Attorney made with Mr. Biden,” Lowell said in a statement. “This is not how an independent investigation is supposed to work, and these charges should be dismissed.”

The flurry of court documents comes as Hunter Biden faces charges in two states headed toward trial while his father, President Joe Biden, runs for reelection.

Prosecutors, for their part, have previously said that any immunity provisions are now defunct along with the rest of the plea agreement that imploded over the summer. Special counsel David Weiss didn’t immediately respond to Hunter Biden’s other arguments, which also include a contention that Weiss wasn’t properly appointed. The prosecution has until Jan. 16 to respond.

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The original plea deal negotiated between the prosecution and the defense contained immunity provisions meant to bring “closure and finality” to the investigation and protect Hunter Biden from being charged for “the same conduct” if Donald Trump was reelected, his previous lawyer said in court documents.

Under the agreement, Hunter Biden would have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and avoided a full prosecution on a gun count if he stayed out of trouble for two years. He’s accused of having a gun for 11 days in 2018, a period where he has acknowledged using drugs. It’s illegal for “habitual drug users” to own guns.

Since its dissolution of that deal, though, prosecutors have filed three felony gun counts in Delaware and, last week, nine tax counts in California alleging he schemed to avoid paying $1.4 million in taxes between 2016 and 2019.

Republicans have said the new charges show the original deal was too lenient. Lowell, though, argued Weiss “buckled under political pressure to bring more severe charges.”

Firearm charges like those Hunter Biden is facing are seldom filed as standalone counts in nonviolent offenses. An appeals court, meanwhile, has struck down the law itself, finding people shouldn’t lose their right to bear arms due solely to past drug use.

That decision from the Louisiana-based 5th Circuit came after the Supreme Court set new standards for gun laws in 2022, leading to upheaval in the nation’s gun-law landscape. President Biden called the Supreme Court opinion “deeply disappointing.”

The 5th Circuit ruling doesn’t directly affect Hunter Biden’s case since it was made in another part of the country, but the federal appeals court overseeing Delaware has made another ruling that people convicted of nonviolent crimes shouldn’t be barred from gun possession for life.

His lawyer Abbe Lowell said in court he plans to file a motion to dismiss the case, challenging their constitutionality.

President Joe Biden’s son faces charges that he lied about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for about 11 days.

He’s acknowledged struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine during that period, but his lawyers have said he didn’t break the law. Gun charges like these are rare, and an appeals court has found the ban on drug users having guns violates the Second Amendment under new Supreme Court standards

Hunter Biden’s attorneys are suggesting that prosecutors bowed to pressure by Republicans who have insisted the president’s son got a sweetheart deal, and the charges were the result of political pressure.

He was indicted after the implosion this summer of his plea agreement with federal prosecutors on tax and gun charges. The deal devolved after the judge who was supposed to sign off on the agreement instead raised a series of questions about the deal. Federal prosecutors had been looking into his business dealings for five years and the agreement would have dispensed with criminal proceedings before his father was actively campaigning for president in 2024.

Now, a special counsel has been appointed to handle the case and there appears no easy end in sight. No new tax charges have yet been filed, but the special counsel has indicated they could come in California or Washington.

In Congress, House Republicans are seeking to link Hunter Biden’s dealings to his father’s through an impeachment inquiry. Republicans have been investigating Hunter Biden for years, since his father was vice president. While questions have arisen about the ethics surrounding the Biden family’s international business, no evidence has emerged so far to prove that Joe Biden, in his current or previous office, abused his role or accepted bribes.

Lawsuits Sep 26, 2023

Hunter Biden sues former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani over infamous laptop

Hunter Biden Sep 18, 2023

Hunter Biden sues the IRS over tax disclosures after agent testimony

The legal wrangling could spill into 2024, with Republicans eager to divert attention from the multiple criminal indictments faced by GOP primary frontrunner Donald Trump, whose trials could be unfolding at the same time.

After remaining silent for years, Hunter Biden has taken a more aggressive legal stance in recent weeks, filing a series of lawsuits over the dissemination of personal information purportedly from his laptop and his tax data by whistleblower IRS agents who testified before Congress as part of the GOP probe.

The president’s son, who has not held public office, is charged with two counts of making false statements and one count of illegal gun possession, punishable by up to 25 years in prison. Under the failed deal, he would have pleaded guilty and served probation rather than jail time on misdemeanor tax charges and avoided prosecution on a single gun count if he stayed out of trouble for two years.

Defense attorneys have argued that he remains protected by an immunity provision that was part of the scuttled plea agreement, but prosecutors overseen by special counsel David Weiss disagree. Weiss also serves as U.S. Attorney for Delaware and was originally appointed by Trump.

Hunter Biden, who lives in California, had asked for Tuesday’s hearing to be conducted remotely over video feed but U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Burke sided with prosecutors, saying there would be no “special treatment.”

Hunter Biden on Tuesday sued former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, his companies and another attorney over alleged violations of computer fraud and data access related to a laptop computer Biden is said to have left at a Delaware repair shop.

“Defendants are among those who have been primarily responsible for what has been described as the ‘total annihilation’ of Plaintiff’s digital privacy,” Biden’s suit in Los Angeles federal court says.

“They also are among those who have been primarily responsible for the ‘total annihilation’ of Plaintiff’s data.”

Biden, son of President Joe Biden, since 2020 has been the target of attacks by Giuliani, former President Donald Trump, Republican members of Congress and conservative media outlets over the alleged contents of that computer.

Giuliani delivered information allegedly gleaned from Biden’s laptop to the New York Post, a newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., in October 2020, a month before the election between Trump and Joe Biden.

The Post then published a story based on that data, which suggested that President Biden may have attended a meeting with a representative of a Ukrainian company that employed Hunter.

Claims that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s allegedly corrupt business dealings, which are in part based on information from the laptop, are the focus of an impeachment inquiry into the Democratic president by GOP-run House committees.

Hunter Biden’s lawsuit in Los Angeles federal court also names as a defendant Robert Costello, an attorney and former federal prosecutor who previously represented Giuliani.

The suit says, “For the past many months and even years, Defendants have dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy toward looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen from Plaintiff’s devices or storage platforms, including what Defendants claim to have obtained from Plaintiff’s alleged ‘laptop’ computer.”

The suit also says Biden’s data was “manipulated, altered and damaged” before it was copied and sent to Giuliani and Costello.

And it accuses them of being involved in “further alterations and damage to the data” that currently is unknown to Biden.

In a footnote, the suit says, “This is not an admission by Plaintiff that [Delaware computer repair shop owner] John Paul Mac Isaac (or others) in fact possessed any particular laptop containing electronically stored data belonging to” Biden

“Rather, Plaintiff simply acknowledges that at some point, Mac Isaac obtained electronically stored data, some of which belonged to Plaintiff,” the footnote goes on to say.

Hunter Biden was indicted in Delaware federal court this month on several criminal charges related to his purchase and possession of a handgun while being a user of illegal drugs. He previously was charged with two counts of failure to pay federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018.

Last week, Biden sued the IRS for what he alleges is the “unlawful disclosure of Mr. Biden’s confidential tax return information” by IRS agents who revealed that information to the media to embarrass him.

Giuliani and Costello did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Hunter Biden will plead not guilty during his initial court appearance for three federal felony gun charges, his attorney said Tuesday as he denied that the son of President Joe Biden is asking for “special treatment” at his first court appearance in the case.

Hunter’s lawyer Abbe Lowell revealed that planned plea as he asked a judge to hold the court appearance by video conference instead of in person at U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware.

Biden, who lives in California, “will waive reading of the indictment, which is merely a few pages and could easily be read at a video conference,” Lowell wrote in a two-page letter to Judge Christopher Burke.

“Mr. Biden also will enter a plea of not guilty, and there is no reason why he cannot utter those two words by video conference,” Lowell wrote.

The court appearance has not yet been scheduled.

Biden, 53, was indicted last week on three criminal counts related to his possession of a firearm while being an unlawful drug user.

Biden, who has been open about his substance abuse struggles, is charged with two counts of lying about his illegal drug use in connection with his purchase of a Colt Cobra revolver. The third count accuses him of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful drug user.

Lowell wrote in Tuesday’s letter that Biden was “not seeking any special treatment” by requesting the video conference for his first appearance in court on the charges.

Conducting the court hearing via video would “minimize an unnecessary burden on government resources and the disruption to the courthouse and downtown areas” in Wilmington from Secret Service agents accompanying Biden, Lowell argued.

“Without getting into specifics, numerous agents and vehicles are required for what would have to be a two-day event (for a proceeding that may be very short in duration),” the attorney wrote.

Federal prosecutors oppose Biden’s bid for a virtual appearance, the judge noted in a court order Monday that directed them to respond by Wednesday.

Lowell’s letter called prosecutors’ opposition “puzzling,” arguing that he was making a “common-sense request in seeking a video appearance.

Biden in late July pleaded not guilty to separate misdemeanor charges of failing to pay federal taxes on more than $1.5 million in annual income in 2017 and 2018.

He had intended to plead guilty to those charges, but his deal with prosecutors fell apart in court under scrutiny from a judge.

Biden also expected to enter into a pretrial diversion agreement on a gun-related crime at that time that could have seen him avoid being criminally charged with a firearm count if he complied with the deal’s conditions for two years.

After the plea deal on the tax charges collapsed, U.S. Attorney David Weiss said that the gun charge diversion agreement had been withdrawn.

But Lowell argues that the deal took effect and thus bars Biden from being charged with the gun crimes. Lowell also has said the charges are unconstitutional as a result of a 2022 Supreme Court ruling knocking down a New York gun law. All six conservatives on the Supreme Court, three of whom were appointed by former President Donald Trump, voted in favor of that decision.

Lowell noted in a court filing earlier this month that Biden “has been following and will continue to follow the conditions of that Agreement.”

The agents “targeted and sought to embarrass Mr. Biden” with the sharing of confidential tax information in press interviews and testimony before Congress, the suit said. His lawyers argue that whistleblower protections don’t apply, but a lawyer for one agent said any confidential information released came under whistleblower authorization and called the suit a “frivolous smear.”

The lawsuit marks the latest legal pushback from Biden as a long-running federal investigation into him unfolds against a sharply political backdrop. That includes an impeachment inquiry aimed at his father, President Joe Biden, seeking to tie him to his son’s business dealings.

“Mr. Biden is the son of the President of the United States. He has all the same responsibilities as any other American citizen, and the IRS can and should make certain that he abides by those responsibilities,” the suit states. “Similarly, Mr. Biden has no fewer or lesser rights than any other American citizen, and no government agency or government agent” has free rein to violate his rights simply because of who he is.

The suit says the IRS hasn’t done enough to halt the airing of his personal information. It seeks to “force compliance with federal tax and privacy laws” and damages of $1,000 for every unauthorized disclosure.

IRS supervisory special agent Greg Shapley, and a second agent, Joe Ziegler, have claimed there was a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” into Hunter Biden in testimony before Congress. They alleged that the prosecutor overseeing the investigation, Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, didn’t have full authority to bring charges in other jurisdictions. Weiss and the Justice Department have denied that.

Shapley’s lawyer called the lawsuit a “frivolous smear” that sought to “intimidate any current and future whistleblowers.” He didn’t release confidential tax information except through legal whistleblower disclosures, his attorney said. “Once Congress released that testimony, like every American citizen, he has a right to discuss that public information.”

Ziegler’s lawyer said he will “continue to speak out” about what he considers “special treatment” for Hunter Biden in the handling of the case.

The GOP-controlled House Oversight Committee called the two men “good people who did everything right to obtain whistleblower protection with the best interest of our country in mind,” in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. The agents testified before the committee in July, and said their “investigation will continue.”

The IRS declined to comment, citing the pending litigation.

The White House, meanwhile, has said that Joe Biden was not involved in his son’s business affairs, and months of investigations have so far not unearthed significant evidence of wrongdoing by the elder Biden, who spoke often to his son and as vice president did stop by a business dinner with his son’s associates.

The investigation into Hunter Biden dates back years, and he had been expected to strike a plea deal with prosecutors over the summer that included guilty pleas to misdemeanor charges of failing to pay his taxes on time. But that deal imploded during a July court hearing, and he was indicted days ago on federal firearms charges. He’s accused of lying about his drug use to buy and briefly keep a gun in October 2018.

Republicans investigating nearly every aspect of his business dealings had decried the plea agreement that spared him jail time as a “sweetheart deal.”

Biden’s defense attorneys have indicated they plan to fight the charges and the case could be on track toward a possible high-stakes trial.

The new civil lawsuit filed in Washington alleges the improper disclosures included the specific tax years under investigation, deductions and allegations about liability.

Weiss eventually sought and was granted special counsel status last month, giving him broad authority to investigate and report out his findings. His prosecutors have indicated they could file new tax charges in Washington or California.

Asked during the daily briefing if the president would pardon or commute his son’s sentence if he gets convicted on the gun charges against him, Jean-Pierre told reporters he would not. It’s the first time the White House has explicitly said a potential pardon is not on the table following Hunter Biden’s indictment this week.

In her response, Jean-Pierre noted that she answered a similar question after the president’s son was first hit with a felony gun charge.

“I’ve answered this question before. It was asked of me not too long ago, a couple of weeks ago, and I was very clear, and I said no,” she said, referring to previous comments from the podium.

Read the full story on NBC News.com here

Biden is accused of lying about his drug use when he bought a firearm in October 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction to crack cocaine, according to the indictment filed in federal court in Delaware by a special counsel overseeing the case.

The indictment comes weeks after the collapse of a plea deal that would have averted a criminal trial and weeks or months of distracting headlines for President Joe Biden.

The court fight doesn’t seem likely to end soon. Hunter Biden’s defense attorney argues he didn’t violate the law and remains protected by an immunity provision that was part of the plea deal. The charges, meanwhile, are rarely filed as stand-alone counts and a federal appeals court recently found the measure he was charged under unconstitutional.

He’s also been under investigation for his business dealings, and the special counsel has indicated that tax charges could be filed at some point in Washington or in California, where he lives.

The legal arguing comes as a political fight also plays out. The House has formally opened an impeachment inquiry into the Democratic president, seeking to tie the elder Biden to his son’s businesses and divert attention away from former President Donald Trump’s own legal woes. Trump’s include federal indictments over the handling of classified documents and efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

Republicans have unearthed no significant evidence so far of wrongdoing by the elder Biden, who as vice president spoke often to his son and stopped by a business dinner with his son’s associates. The White House maintains Joe Biden was not involved in his son’s business affairs.

Republicans had slammed the plea agreement that spared Hunter Biden jail time as a “sweetheart deal.” Rep. James Comer, the lead Republican pursing the impeachment inquiry, called the gun charges “a very small start” and pushed for investigation of whether the president was involved in his son’s business dealings. Trump also pointed to the lack of connection to Joe Biden in the gun charge plea agreement.

Federal prosecutors investigating Hunter Biden have not indicated Joe Biden is connected over the course of their yearslong probe. The lead prosecutor, Trump-appointed Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, was elevated to special counsel last month, giving him broad authority to investigate and report out his findings.

Read more

Hunter Biden Sep 13, 2023

Hunter Biden sues former Trump aide over alleged computer fraud related to personal laptop

Kevin McCarthy Sep 12, 2023

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The three-count indictment he filed Thursday alleges Hunter Biden lied on a form required for every gun purchase when he bought a .38-caliber Colt Cobra Special at a Wilmington, Delaware, gun shop.

He’s charged with two counts of making false statements, first for checking a box falsely saying he was not addicted to drugs and second for giving it to the shop for their federally required records. A third count alleges he possessed the gun for about 11 days despite knowing he was a drug user.

The counts are punishable by up to 25 years in prison if convicted, though “actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum sentence,” a Justice Department statement from Weiss said.

A felony gun charge against Hunter Biden, 53, had previously been part of the plea deal that also included guilty pleas to misdemeanor charges of failing to pay taxes on about $4 million of income in 2017 and 2018.

Under the terms, he would not have pleaded guilty to the gun charge, and prosecutors would have agreed to dismiss it if he stayed out of trouble for two years. But the agreement imploded during a court hearing in July when a judge raised questions about it.

Defense attorney Abbe Lowell argued that part of the deal, which includes immunity provisions against other potential charges, remains in place. He said in a statement that Hunter Biden “possessing an unloaded gun for 11 days” presented no threat to public safety and slammed “’MAGA Republicans’ improper and partisan interference in this process,” a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan.

Lowell took over after Hunter Biden’s previous lawyer in the case, Christopher Clark, withdrew, saying he might be called to testify about the immunity provisions.

Prosecutors maintain the agreement never took effect and is now invalid.

Charges related to gun possession by drug users are rare, especially when not in connection with other crimes. Of all the people sentenced for illegal gun possession in 2021, about 5% were charged due to drug use, according to U.S. Sentencing Commission data.

Most such cases are brought against people accused of some other crime as well, said Adam Winkler, a constitutional law professor and expert in gun policy at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law. “It’s relatively rare to prosecute someone for being a substance abuser in possession of firearms, absent other criminal activity, or unusual circumstances,” he said.

A federal appeals court recently found the longstanding purchase ban didn’t stand up to new standards for gun laws set by the Supreme Court. The Fifth Circuit found the nation’s “history and traditions” don’t support “disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug use.”

Congressional Republicans, meanwhile, have continued their own investigations into nearly every aspect of Hunter Biden’s business dealings as well as the Justice Department’s handling of the case.

Two FBI agents who worked on the Hunter Biden case testified separately behind closed doors this week to lawmakers about allegations of political interference in the case. Thomas Sobocinski, the special agent in charge of the Baltimore Field Office of the FBI and an unidentified agent who served as his No. 2, told Congress that Weiss had full authority of the yearslong investigation, rebutting IRS whistleblower testimony that the Justice Department slow-walked the probe.

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In a lawsuit filed in the Central District of California, Biden’s lawyers said that Garrett Ziegler, his nonprofit Marco Polo and 10 unidentified individuals violated state and federal laws on computer fraud and data access. Marco Polo describes itself as a nonprofit research group that exposes corruption.

“Although the precise manner by which Defendant Ziegler obtained Plaintiff’s data remains unclear, there is no dispute that Defendants have, to at least some extent, accessed, tampered with, manipulated, altered, copied and damaged Plaintiff’s data, and that their actions are illegal, unauthorized, and without Plaintiff’s consent,” they wrote.

Biden’s lawyers alleged that the defendants were in violation of a federal statute that protects against the intentional, unauthorized access to a computer and the acquisition of financial records from a financial institution or card issuer.

den’s lawsuit seeks an injunction that would bar Ziegler and others from accessing or tampering with his data, as well as general and punitive damages to be proven at trial and attorney’s fees and costs.

NBC News was unable to reach Ziegler for comment, and his nonprofit did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

Federal prosecutors plan to ask a grand jury to indict Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, on gun-related charge before Sept. 29, they revealed in a court filing Wednesday.

The plan was disclosed in a status report that special counsel David Weiss filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware, six weeks after a planned plea deal that would have seen Hunter plead guilty to tax crimes — while avoiding conviction on the gun charge — collapsed after a judge questioned its terms.

A lawyer for Hunter later said Wednesday that the prior deferred prosecution deal is still valid for the gun charge, meaning that Hunter cannot be charged with that crime if he stays out of trouble for two years, at which point that case would be closed.

The lawyer, Abbe Lowell, also said the deal bars Weiss from filing any more charges against Hunter.

The gun charge that Weiss indicates he will seek from a grand jury prohibits people who are users of illicit drugs from possessing a firearm.

The constitutionality of that charge, at least in some cases, was called into question last month by a panel of judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which overturned the conviction of a Mississippi man who was sentenced to prison for possessing firearms while being a user of marijuana.

The appeals panel tossed out in the conviction because the law as applied to the defendant in that case, Patrick Daniels Jr., conflicted with a 2022 Supreme Court ruling that voided a New York state law regulating gun possession because it violated the nation’s “historic tradition of firearm regulation.”

Hunter does still face charges of two counts of failure to pay federal income taxes on income of more than $1.5 million annually in 2017 and 2018. He entered a not-guilty plea to those counts at the July 26 hearing in Delaware where the plea deal fell apart.

Since then, Weiss’ office and defense lawyers have argued in dueling court filings over whether their prior agreement to let Hunter escape prosecution on the felony weapons charge is in effect.

Weiss’s filing Wednesday noted that federal law says that if prosecutors want to criminally charge a defendant they must do so within 30 days of that person being arrested or summoned to court, barring that clock being suspended for various legal reasons.

“The Speedy Trial Act requires that the Government obtain the return of an indictment by a grand jury by Friday, September 29, 2023, at the earliest,” Weiss’s office wrote.

“The Government intends to seek the return of an indictment in this case before that date. Thus, the Government does not believe any action by the Court is necessary at this time.”

Hunter’s lawyer Lowell, in a statement said, “We believe the signed and filed diversion agreement [on the gun charge] remains valid and prevents any additional charges from being filed against Mr. Biden, who has been abiding by the conditions of release under that agreement for the last several weeks, including regular visits by the probation office.”

“We expect a fair resolution of the sprawling, 5-year investigation into Mr. Biden that was based on the evidence and the law, not outside political pressure, and we’ll do what is necessary on behalf of Mr. Biden to achieve that,” Lowell said in the statement, which was obtained by NBC News.

Hunter Biden, who had business dealings in China and Ukraine, for years has been the focal point of allegations by Republicans of corruption involving him and his father.

Neither Biden has ever been charged in connection with those allegations.

But Hunter Biden has been under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware, which Weiss leads, since 2018.

Weiss was appointed to that job by former President Donald Trump, who lost his reelection bid to Joe Biden in 2020. Trump is now seeking a 2024 rematch against Biden as the Republican nominee.

Weiss enraged congressional Republicans in June by offering Hunter a plea deal on relatively minor charges, ones that would nearly guarantee he would not serve any time in jail.

As part of that deal, Hunter agreed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charges of failure to pay income taxes.

He also consented to a so-called pretrial diversion agreement, which would allow him to escape being charged with a felony of possessing a firearm while being a drug addict if he abided by the conditions of that agreement.

On July 26, Hunter and prosecutors appeared in Delaware federal court before Judge Maryellen Noreika, with both sides expecting to formalize that deal.

Instead, the deal collapsed after Noreika questioned prosecutors about its terms, particularly the condition that called for the judge — and not the Department of Justice — to decide whether Hunter was complying with the gun-charge diversion agreement over a two-year period.

That condition was widely seen as insurance against Trump pressuring the DOJ to find Hunter in noncompliance with the agreement if Trump returned to the White House.

Noreika, who herself was appointed by Trump, gave Hunter’s lawyers and prosecutors time to redo the deal to address her concerns. But those discussions failed.

Weiss last month asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint him special counsel in the case, which Garland consented to.

Shortly afterward, Weiss said Hunter Biden would likely face trial in either California or Washington, D.C., for the tax crimes.

Hunter’s attorneys last month told Noreika that Weiss had reneged on the previously agreed deal on the tax crimes. Defense lawyers also argued that the gun-charge diversion deal was still “valid and binding.”

Weiss’s office has said the gun agreement is now off the table, and that it is not valid because it was not signed by the U.S. Probation Office.

But in their separate court filing Wednesday, Hunter’s lawyers said they still believe the deal is in place, and said he is complying with its conditions.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika was expected following a failed plea agreement last month between federal prosecutors and President Joe Biden’s son.

Special counsel David Weiss’s office moved to dismiss the charges last week, citing venue problems that would not have been an issue had Biden pleaded guilty in the case as initially anticipated.

Hunter Biden had agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges related to his failure to pay income taxes earlier this year in return for prosecutors recommending a sentence of probation. But the agreement fell apart over confusion at the plea hearing about a separate gun charge and questions the judge had about the deals.

Weiss was the main prosecutor at the time, as U.S. Attorney for Delaware. He has since been named special counsel.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

Lawyers for Hunter Biden told a judge that federal prosecutors on Friday decided to “renege” on a previously agreed deal in which the son of President Joe Biden would plea guilty to tax crimes in exchange for a recommended no-jail sentence.

But Hunter Biden’s lawyers also said in a new Delaware federal court filing that a second agreement with prosecutors that would allow him to escape conviction for a gun-related crime is “valid and binding.”

District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika, in an order Monday, told U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss to respond to the filing by noon ET on Tuesday.

The new court filings are the latest developments in the Hunter Biden criminal case, which was thrown into disarray on July 26, when he appeared before Noreika for what was expected to be a hearing in which he would plead guilty.

Weiss on Friday was appointed special counsel for the case by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland right after Weiss’ prosecutors said in a Delaware federal court filing that plea talks with Hunter Biden’s lawyer had failed.

The filing also said that the president’s son would likely face trial in California or Washington, D.C., and that he might be charged with more crimes.

Chris Clark, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, said Friday, “We are confident when all of these maneuverings are at an end my client will have resolution and will be moving on with his life successfully.”

At the July 26 hearing, Hunter Biden, who has been under investigation for five years, planned to plead guilty to two counts of failure to pay federal income taxes on annual income of more than $1.5 million in 2017 and 2018.

Weiss’ office had offered to recommend he receive a sentence of probation for those convictions.

Separately, prosecutors offered him a diversion agreement that would drop a criminal charge of having a gun while being a drug user if he abided by certain conditions for a period of time.

The agreements fell apart after Noreika questioned their terms at the hearing, and whether federal case law allowed the conditions prosecutors had set.

A key sticking point for the judge was the requirement that she, not the U.S. Department of Justice, be the one to decide if Hunter Biden violates the gun agreement over a two-year period.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer told her that requirement would avoid the deal becoming “more politicized” in the future, a clear reference to the chance that Donald Trump is elected president in 2024, and orders the DOJ to act against Hunter.

After Noreika said she would give prosecutors and defense lawyers more time to answer her questions, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to the tax crimes.

In their filing over the weekend, his lawyers wrote: “While counsel for the Defendant are still prepared to respond to the questions Your Honor posed at the July 26 hearing, in light of the United States’ decision on Friday to renege on the previously agreed-upon Plea Agreement, we agree that those issues are moot at this point.”

Biden’s challenges pale in comparison to his predecessor and possible future rival, Donald Trump, who is facing three criminal indictments, with additional charges expected soon. But the appointment of the special counsel was nonetheless a reminder of the vulnerabilities facing Biden as he wages another election campaign in a deeply uncertain political climate.

news Aug 11, 2023

Trump-appointee David Weiss named special counsel in Hunter Biden probe as DOJ calls for trial

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There was little immediate sign that Garland’s decision meaningfully changed Biden’s standing within his party. If anything, it underscored the unprecedented nature of the next election. Rather than a battle of ideas waged on the traditional campaign trail, the next push for the presidency may be shaped by sudden legal twists in courtrooms from Washington to Delaware and Miami.

“Prior to Trump, this would be a big deal,” New Hampshire Democratic Party Chair Ray Buckley said of Friday’s announcement. “Now, I don’t think it means anything. Trump has made everyone so numb to this stuff.”

Referring to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, Buckley added, “Because of how dismissive MAGA America is to the very real crimes of Trump and his family, it has numbed the minds of swing voters and Democratic voters or activists who would normally be fully engaged and outraged.”

Polling has consistently shown that Democratic voters were not excited about Biden’s reelection even before Garland’s announcement.

Just 47% of Democrats wanted Biden to run again in 2024, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. Democrats’ enthusiasm for Biden’s presidential campaign has consistently trailed behind Republicans’ enthusiasm for Trump’s: 55% of Republicans said they wanted Trump to run again in the AP-NORC poll. And Biden’s approval ratings, at 40% in the most recent Gallup poll, are lower than virtually every other president in the modern era save Jimmy Carter.

Garland announced Friday that he was naming David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware, as the special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation. It comes as plea deal talks involving tax and gun charges in the case Weiss had already been probing hit an impasse.

The appointment of a special counsel ensures that Trump will not stand alone as the only presidential candidate grappling with the fallout of a serious criminal investigation in the midst of the 2024 campaign season.

Of course, the cases are hardly equal in the context of the next presidential election.

There is no evidence that President Biden himself has committed any wrongdoing. Meanwhile, Trump has been charged in a plot to undermine democracy for his actions leading up the the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

He’s also facing separate charges for refusing to turn over classified documents after leaving the White House and financial crimes in New York related to a hush money case involving a porn star. And Georgia prosecutors are investigating whether Trump broke state laws by interfering in the 2020 election.

Still, Republicans were hopeful that the new special counsel may ultimately shift attention away from Trump’s baggage while bolstering conservative calls to impeach the Democratic president, a proposal that has divided the GOP on Capitol Hill, which has long sought evidence linking Hunter Biden’s alleged wrongdoings to his father.

news Aug 11, 2023

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Hunter Biden Aug 11, 2023

WATCH: Merrick Garland's statement on naming a special counsel in Hunter Biden investigation

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Documents in failed Hunter Biden plea agreement made public

Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee, has already obtained thousands of pages of financial records from various members of the Biden family through subpoenas to the Treasury Department and various financial institutions as part of a congressional probe. He released a statement Friday accusing Garland of “trying to stonewall congressional oversight.”

Comer vowed “to follow the Biden family’s money trail.”

Trump, the overwhelming front-runner in the crowded Republican presidential nomination fight, used the opportunity to put his likely general election opponent on the defensive, referring to the “Biden crime family” and the “Biden cartel.”

“If this special counsel is truly independent — even though he failed to bring proper charges after a four year investigation and he appears to be trying to move the case to a more Democrat-friendly venue — he will quickly conclude that Joe Biden, his troubled son Hunter, and their enablers, including the media, which colluded with the 51 intelligence officials who knowingly misled the public about Hunter’s laptop, should face the required consequences,” the Trump campaign said in a statement.

Back in New Hampshire, Buckley acknowledged that voters are not excited about Biden’s reelection.

“But they’re really not excited about Trump,” he said. “There’s a seriousness around this election. People can say they’re not excited (about Biden). They can say, ‘Oh, he shouldn’t run again.’ But the reality is that he’s the only alternative to Trump.”

Meanwhile, it’s unclear how closely key voters are paying attention.

A Marquette Law School Poll conducted last month found that about three-quarters of Americans had heard about Hunter Biden’s agreement to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of tax evasion and a gun charge. Republicans were slightly more likely than Democrats to say they have heard “a lot” about the topic, with independents being much less likely to be paying attention.

Democratic strategist Bill Burton suggested the GOP’s focus on the president’s son would backfire.

“From a political standpoint, I think Republicans are stupid to spend so much time talking about the president’s son,” he said. “People are going to be voting on the economy. They’re going to be voting on who’s tougher on social media companies and national security.”

Burton continued, “As a dad, I think it’s pretty disgusting that you would attack someone’s son like this.”

___

AP polls and surveys reporter Linley Sanders in Washington contributed.

Garland said he is naming David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware who has been probing the financial and business dealings of the president’s son, as the special counsel.

Garland said on Tuesday that Weiss told him that “in his judgment, his investigation has reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a Special Counsel, and he asked to be appointed.”

“Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel,” Garland said.

The move is a momentous development from the typically cautious Garland and comes amid a pair of sweeping Justice Department probes into Donald Trump, the former president, and President Joe Biden’s chief rival in next year’s election. It comes as House Republicans are mounting their own investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings.

“Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel,” Garland said.

The documents, which U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika made public at the request of NBC News, provide detailed accounts of the cases surrounding the criminal charges, with fact sets that were agreed to by Biden’s lawyers and federal prosecutors in Delaware.

news Aug 2, 2023

Trump's GOP allies vent about Hunter Biden after latest special counsel indictment

Hunter Biden Jul 31, 2023

Biden spoke with son's business associates numerous times, former partner tells lawmakers

The plea deal called for Biden to plead guilty to two counts of failing to pay his taxes in return for prosecutors recommending a sentence of probation. A separate gun charge for illegally owning a Colt Cobra .38 Special handgun would have been dropped in two years if Biden honored the terms of what’s known as a diversion agreement.

The deal wound up being scrapped — at least temporarily — because of questions the judge raised last week in court about the proposed agreements.

“These agreements are not straightforward and they contain some atypical provisions,” Noreika said, including one that could theoretically protect Biden from other tax-related crimes.

Representatives for the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s office and Biden did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

Devon Archer, 49, answered questions for about four hours during a transcribed interview before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, at one point telling members that Biden put his father on speakerphone during business meetings about 20 times, but not to talk to business, Rep. Daniel Goldman said.

“The witness indicated that Hunter spoke to his father every day, and approximately 20 times over the course of 10-year relationship, Hunter may have put his father on the phone with any number of different people, and they never once spoke about any business dealings,” Goldman, D-N.Y., told reporters after the closed-door meeting.

“As he described it, it was all casual conversation, niceties, the weather, what’s going on. There wasn’t a single conversation about any of the business dealings that Hunter had,” Goldman added.

For more on this story, go to NBC News.

In a statement first reported by People that was obtained by NBC News, Biden said that he and first lady Jill Biden wanted the best for all of their grandchildren, “including Navy.”

“Our son Hunter and Navy’s mother, Lunden, are working together to foster a relationship that is in the best interests of their daughter, preserving her privacy as much as possible going forward,” the president said. “This is not a political issue, it’s a family matter. Jill and I only want what is best for all of our grandchildren, including Navy.”

Hunter Biden and Lunden Roberts last month settled a paternity case over their daughter Navy in an Arkansas court.

For more on this story, go to NBC News.

Hunter Biden was charged last month with two misdemeanor crimes of failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes from over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018 and had been expected to plead guilty Wednesday after he made an agreement with prosecutors, who were planning to recommend two years of probation. Prosecutors said Wednesday Hunter Biden remains under active investigation, but would not reveal details.

U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, raised multiple concerns about the specifics of the deal and her role in the proceedings. The plan also included an agreement on a separate gun charge — Biden has been accused of possessing a firearm in 2018 as a drug user. As long as he adhered to the terms of his agreement, the gun case was to be be wiped from his record. Otherwise, the felony charge carries 10 years in prison.

The overlapping agreements created confusion for the judge, who said the lawyers needed to untangle technical issues — including over her role in enforcing the gun agreement — before moving forward.

“It seems to me like you are saying ‘just rubber stamp the agreement, Your Honor.’ … This seems to me to be form over substance,” she said. She asked defense lawyers and prosecutors to explain why she should accept the deal. In the meantime, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to the tax charges.

The collapsed proceedings were a surprising development in the yearslong investigation, and a resolution that had been carefully negotiated over several weeks and included a lengthy back-and-forth between Justice Department prosecutors and Biden’s attorneys.

The plea deal was meant to clear the air for Hunter Biden and avert a trial that would have generated weeks or months of distracting headlines. But the politics remain as messy as ever, with Republicans insisting he got a sweetheart deal and the Justice Department pressing ahead on investigations into Trump, the GOP’s 2024 presidential primary front-runner.

Trump is already facing a state criminal case in New York and a federal indictment in Florida. Last week, a target letter was sent to Trump from special counsel Jack Smith that suggests the former president may soon be indicted on new federal charges, this time involving his struggle to cling to power after his 2020 election loss to Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden Jul 8, 2023

House Republicans gear up to investigate Hunter Biden. Here's what to know

politics Jul 19, 2023

IRS whistleblowers air claims to Congress about ‘slow-walking' of the Hunter Biden case

Republicans claim a double standard, in which the Democratic president’s son got off easy while the president’s rival has been unfairly castigated. Congressional Republicans are pursuing their own investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter Biden’s dealings, including foreign payments.

“District Judge Noreika did the right thing by refusing to rubberstamp Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal,” said House Oversight Committee chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. “But let’s be clear: Hunter’s sweetheart plea deal belongs in the trash.”

Wednesday’s hearing quickly veered into confusion, with Hunter Biden at one point answering “yes” when asked if he was pleading guilty of his own free will, before later pulling back in moving forward with the plea.

The judge said she was concerned about a provision in the agreement on the gun charge that she said would have created a role for her where she would determine if he violated the terms. She argued such a role doesn’t exist for judges; the lawyers said they were only asking for the court to play a factfinding role as a neutral party in determining if a violation happened.

“We wanted the protection of the court,” Biden’s attorney Chris Clark said.

She also raised concerns that the agreement included a non-prosecution clause for crimes outside of the gun charge.

The attorneys appeared to squabble over the deal’s terms, too, retreating to their corners to discuss the issues, before they met at the prosecutors’ table and, at one point, could be heard yelling at each other. “Well, we’ll just rip it up!” Clark was heard shouting.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The judge also asked Biden to be more specific about his business relationships and to discuss his substance use issues as she combed through the plea agreement. She asked him to name the Ukrainian and Chinese entities referred to without name in the agreement.

She also asked him the last time he used alcohol or drugs and whether he was currently receiving treatment.

Biden answered June 1, 2019 and said he was not currently in treatment, though he did say he was in an anonymous support program for his substance abuse issues.

“Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and this was a personal matter for him,” White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said. “As we have said, the president, the first lady, they love their son, and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life. This case was handled independently, as all of you know, by the Justice Department under the leadership of a prosecutor appointed by the former president, President Trump.

President Biden, meanwhile, has said very little publicly, except to note, “I’m very proud of my son.”

Lawmakers were hearing from the two IRS agents assigned to Hunter Biden case, which looked into his failure to pay taxes. The president’s son pleaded guilty recently to misdemeanor tax charges in what Republicans have derided as a “sweetheart” deal.

Still, House Republicans are deepening their own investigation, making broad claims of corruption and wrongdoing by the Bidens, which they acknowledge are not proven.

Hunter Biden Jul 8, 2023

House Republicans gear up to investigate Hunter Biden. Here's what to know

news Jun 28, 2023

Biden Snaps ‘No!' When Asked If He Was Involved in Alleged Hunter Biden Shakedown of Chinese Executive

“We will continue to follow the money trail,” said Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, as he opened the session.

The Justice Department has denied the whistleblowers’ allegations.

The top Democrat on the committee, Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin, called the hearing “a theater of the absurd.”

IRS supervisory special agent Greg Shapley, and a second agent, Joe Ziegler, claim there was what Shapley called in testimony a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” into Hunter Biden, including during the Trump administration in the months before the 2020 election that Joe Biden won.

One of Shapley’s most detailed claims was that U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware, the federal prosecutor who led the investigation, asked for special counsel status in order to bring the tax cases against Hunter Biden in jurisdictions outside Delaware, including the District of Columbia and California, but was denied.

Weiss and the Justice Department have denied that, saying he had “full authority” and never sought to bring charges in other states.

Shapley testified under questioning during an exchange with Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, that he wrote an email later that day to memorialize the October 2022 meeting with Weiss and five others. Shapley insisted on Wednesday on his own recollection of what was said.

The second IRS whistleblower, Ziegler, described his frustrations with the way the case was handled, dating to the Trump administration under Attorney General William Barr. The tax agency employee said he started the investigation into Hunter Biden in 2015 and began to delve deeply into his life and finances.

Ziegler, whose name was withheld in closed-door interview transcripts released earlier by Republicans, was referred to by the committee as “whistleblower X,” said Wednesday decided to come forward publicly “not as a hero or a victim,” but as a married, gay Democrat “compelled to disclose the truth.”

Democrats on the committee pushed back on the whistleblower claims that Hunter Biden received special treatment because his father was the nominee for president in the upcoming 2020 election.

Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, D-Ill., made the point that Donald Trump was president during the 2020 time frame when the whistleblowers allege there was interference.

Trump’s Justice Department, he noted, issued a memorandum in February 2020 telling prosecutors to “exercise particular care regarding sensitive investigations and prosecutions that relate to political candidates, campaigns and other politically sensitive individuals and organizations,” his voice rising. “Especially in an election year!”

Democrats have pointed out that Weiss was appointed by Trump and the federal investigation into Hunter Biden was initiated under Trump. Biden kept Weiss on the case after he won the election.

In one startling moment at the hearing, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., displayed graphic sexual images of Hunter Biden with women, suggesting he had paid for their to travel to Washington, D.C., presumably for sex, in a potential violation of law.

Democrats led by Raskin objected to the graphic content being shown at a public hearing by Greene, saying it was inappropriate.

Rep. Shontel Brown, D-Ohio, said Republicans had “shredded all their credibility.” She questioned whether this was an investigation into the president or “of his son, who does not and has never worked at the White House.”

As Republicans decry what they say is a justice system favoring the politically connected, Rep. Maxwell Frost, D-Fla., pointed to the killing of Emmett Till and the treatment of other Black Americans and people of color across U.S. history and said: “This is the two-tiered justice system.”

Republicans have sought testimony from other agents involved in the case, and held a transcribed interview this week with an FBI agent, now retired, who they said was involved. But other witnesses have declined to appear before the panel.

Before the hearing, Comer, R-Ky., acknowledged it has been difficult for Republicans to succinctly outline Hunter Biden’s tangled financial affairs or to provide convincing evidence of any specific wrongdoing by the president or his family.

“It’s so hard to explain,” Comer told reporters. “Hopefully these IRS agents can do a better job explaining than I can.”

His committee picked up on the work of the House Ways and Means Committee, which initially interviewed the whistleblowers. GOP Rep. Jason Smith of Missouri, the head of that committee, joined Wednesday’s hearing.

It is unclear how much of the conflict described by the whistleblowers amounts to internal disagreement about how to pursue the investigation or a pattern of interference and preferential treatment.

Justice Department officials have countered these claims by pointing to the extraordinary set of circumstances surrounding a criminal case into a subject who at the time was the son of a leading presidential candidate. Department policy has long warned prosecutors to take care in charging cases with potential political overtones around the time of an election, to avoid any possible influence on the outcome.

In one specific case, Shapley described IRS agents’ efforts to execute a search warrant of a Virginia storage facility where the younger Biden’s documents were being stored. He said the assistant U.S. attorney involved in the case reached out to Hunter Biden’s lawyers, in a move that is seen as customary in cases involving high-profile individuals, but it ruined “our chance to get to evidence before being destroyed, manipulated, or concealed.”

A similar occurrence happened when the FBI officials notified Hunter Biden’s Secret Service detail ahead of an effort to interview him and several of his business associates in order to avoid a potential shoot-off between two law enforcement bodies.

In another instance, Shapley told Congress that in a meeting with Weiss and Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf after the 2020 election, he and other agents wanted to discuss an email between Hunter Biden associates where one person made reference to the “big guy.” Shapley said Wolf refused to do so, saying she did not want to ask questions about ’dad.””

Democrats sought to chalk up the entirety of the whistleblowers’ claims as a disagreement between prosecutors and investigators on how to move forward with charges against Hunter Biden.

“My view here is that we’re spending hours on a disagreement on whether to charge someone and we have a whole democratic process that decides that,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif. “You don’t get to decide that.”

Republicans have moved ahead, issuing a series of requests for voluntary testimony from senior Justice officials, including Weiss.

Weiss said in a letter to Jordan earlier this month that he would be happy to testify before the committee when he is legally able to share information with Congress without violating the longstanding department policy of discussing an ongoing investigation.

Testimony from Justice Department officials could come after Hunter Biden appears for his plea hearing next week.

___

AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

Leaders of the House Judiciary, Oversight and Accountability, and Ways and Means committees opened a joint investigation into the federal case into President Joe Biden’s youngest son days after it was announced last month that he will plead guilty to the misdemeanor tax offenses as part of an agreement with the Justice Department.

Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, James Comer of Kentucky and Jason Smith of Missouri have since issued a series of requests for voluntary testimony from senior officials at the Justice Department, FBI and Internal Revenue Service as they investigate what they claim is improper interference. Republicans have also requested a special counsel review of supposed retaliation against the whistleblowers who came forward with the claims.

Hunter Biden Jun 29, 2023

Hunter Biden reaches child support settlement with Arkansas woman

news Jun 28, 2023

Biden Snaps ‘No!' When Asked If He Was Involved in Alleged Hunter Biden Shakedown of Chinese Executive

The congressional inquiry was launched after the House Ways and Means Committee, led by Smith, voted last month to publicly disclose hundreds of pages of testimony from the IRS employees who worked on the Hunter Biden case.

The transcripts of Greg Shapley and an unidentified agent detail what they called a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” and delaying enforcement actions in the months before the 2020 election won by Joe Biden.

The Justice Department has denied the whistleblower claims and said repeatedly that U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware, the federal prosecutor who led the investigation, had “full authority” of the case.

Here’s what to know about the emerging investigation.

Investigating IRS whistleblower claims

In April, the first IRS whistleblower, Shapley, came forward when his attorney reached out to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa to say that his client had information about a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition” of what was then an ongoing criminal investigation related to Hunter Biden.

Smith, chair of the Ways and Means Committee, who has jurisdiction over the IRS, brought in Shapley in late May for an hourslong interview, where he described several roadblocks that he and several other IRS agents on the case encountered when trying to interview individuals relevant to the investigation or issue search warrants.

The whistleblowers insist their testimony reflects a pattern of inference and preferential treatment in the Hunter Biden case and not just disagreement with their superiors about what investigative steps to take. Justice Department policy has long warned prosecutors to take care in charging cases with potential political overtones around the time of an election, to avoid any possible influence on the outcome.

The most disputed claim from the whistleblowers is that Weiss — first appointed by former President Donald Trump and kept on by the Biden administration — asked the Justice Department in March 2022 to be provided special counsel status in order to bring the tax cases against Hunter Biden in jurisdictions outside Delaware, including Washington, D.C., and California, but was denied.

A second IRS whistleblower, who asked the committee to keep his identity secret, described his persistent frustrations with the way the Hunter Biden case was handled, dating back to the Trump administration under Attorney General William Barr. He said he started the investigation into Hunter Biden in 2015 and delved deeply into his personal life and finances.

Investigating claims of retaliation

Both men have testified that they faced retaliation at the IRS after coming forward with concerns about the handling of the Hunter Biden case. Shapley, who was a career supervisory agent, told the committee that Weiss helped block his job promotion after the tax agency employee reached out to congressional investigators about the Biden case.

The second unidentified whistleblower said he was taken off the Hunter Biden investigation around the same time as Shapley, who was his supervisor. Though he was informed of the decision by officials at the IRS, the second whistleblower believes his removal was actually ordered by officials in the Justice Department. Neither of the men provided lawmakers evidence that was the case, instead citing what they had witnessed internally as they pushed for various investigative steps.

The three Republican chairmen, along with Sens. Grassley and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, sent a letter to the Justice Department asking for an immediate review of the retaliation claims.

“The importance of protecting whistleblowers from unlawful retaliation and informing whistleblowers about their rights under the law cannot be understated. After all, it is the law,” the lawmakers wrote.

Justice Department pushback

The Justice Department has denied the allegations from the whistleblowers, saying that Weiss has had “full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland also rebuffed the idea that Weiss, a veteran prosecutor, asked to be designated as a special counsel.

“The only person who has the authority to make someone a special counsel, or refuse to make them a special counsel, is the attorney general,” Garland told reporters last month. He added, “Mr. Weiss never made that request.”

In a June 30 letter, Weiss also further denied the claims by telling House Republicans that the Justice Department “did not retaliate” against Shapley. He also said he was assured by the department that if he sought to bring charges against Hunter Biden in a venue other than Delaware, he would be granted special status to do so. Generally, U.S. attorneys are limited to their own jurisdictions when bringing criminal charges.

Next steps

The three Republican chairmen have provided a deadline of Thursday for the department to begin scheduling nearly a dozen individuals for transcribed interviews. They have said that if the deadline is not met, they will resort to issuing congressional subpoenas to force cooperation.

Weiss said in his recent letter that he would be willing to discuss such topics with congressional officials, but reiterated that he cannot divulge information about the Hunter Biden case because it is an active criminal investigation.

Garland has said publicly that he would not stop Weiss from testifying before Congress. “I would support Mr. Weiss explaining or testifying on these matters when he deems it appropriate,” the attorney general said.

The settlement filed in Independence County Circuit Court on Thursday did not reveal the financial terms of the agreement. Biden, who was determined to be the child’s father in 2020 following a DNA test, had sought to reduce his monthly child support from $20,000 a month.

Biden agreed as part of the order to give an unspecified number of his paintings to the child to keep or sell. Lunden Roberts, the child’s mother, withdrew her motion for the child to have Biden’s last name. Under the agreement, the two also agreed to discuss providing a college education fund for the child within the next five years.

A trial had been set for next month in the child support case, and Biden faced a July 10 contempt hearing in Arkansas. Biden and Roberts reached the settlement on June 16, the same day he appeared in Little Rock to be deposed, according to Thursday’s filing.

Biden is scheduled to appear in federal court in July to formally strike a plea agreement with prosecutors on tax and gun charges that will likely spare him jail time. Under the agreement made public last week, Biden will plead guilty to the misdemeanor tax offenses but avoid full prosecution on a separate gun charge.

Attorneys for Biden and Roberts did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

Accompanied by his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, Hunter Biden’s attendance at the White House dinner comes after a court filing Tuesday revealed he reached a plea agreement with the U.S. attorney for Delaware, a Trump appointee, on two tax-related counts. He also faces a separate felony gun possession charge that is likely to be dismissed if he meets certain conditions.

Hunter Biden did not respond to a shouted question from a reporter who asked how he felt “after taking the plea deal.”

The White House said that 400 guests were invited to the state dinner. Numerous Cabinet members and lawmakers were spotted at the event, as well as other notable guests such as Apple CEO Tim Cook, tennis legend Billie Jean King and Ralph Lauren, who designed the first lady’s dress.

Other Biden family members in attendance included Hunter Biden’s daughter Naomi.

Hunter Biden is scheduled to appear before U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, on July 26 in Delaware for a plea hearing.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

The House Ways and Means Committee, led by Republican Rep. Jason Smith, voted to publicly disclose congressional testimony from two former IRS agents who worked on the federal investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes and foreign business dealings.

“Whistleblowers describe how the Biden Justice Department intervened and overstepped in a campaign to protect the son of Joe Biden by delaying, divulging and denying an ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax crimes,” Smith, R-Mo., told reporters.

Hunter Biden Jun 20, 2023

Hunter Biden reaches deal with Justice Department on tax and gun charges

Hunter Biden Jun 20, 2023

Legal experts say the charges against Hunter Biden are rarely brought

The testimony from the two individuals — Greg Shapley and an unidentified IRS agent — detailed what they called a pattern of “slow-walking investigative steps” and delaying enforcement actions months before elections. But it’s unclear whether the conflict they describe amounts to internal disagreement about how to pursue the wide-ranging probe or a pattern of interference and preferential treatment. Department policy has long warned prosecutors to take care in charging cases with potential political overtones around the time of an election, to avoid any possible influence on the outcome.

The Justice Department denied the whistleblower claims, saying the U.S. attorney in charge of the Hunter Biden probe, David Weiss — who was appointed by former President Donald Trump — had full authority over the case.

The release of the testimony comes just two days after Hunter Biden, 53, announced he will plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses as part of an agreement with the Justice Department. The agreement made public Tuesday will also avert prosecution on a felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user, as long as he adheres to conditions agreed to in court.

Congressional Republicans called the plea deal a “sweetheart deal” for the president’s son and another example of a “two-tiered justice system” that goes easy on Democrats. They also pledged to continue their own investigations into the Biden family and what they call their efforts to trade off the presidency.

The first IRS whistleblower, Shapley, came forward in April when his attorney reached out to GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa to say that his client had information about a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition” of what was then an ongoing criminal investigation related to Hunter Biden. In hourslong testimony, Shapley described several roadblocks that he and the several other IRS agents on the case faced when trying to interview individuals relevant to the case or issue search warrants.

Perhaps Shapley’s most striking claim was that Weiss asked the Justice Department in March 2020 to be provided special counsel status in order to bring the tax cases in jurisdictions outside Delaware, including Washington, D.C., and California, but was denied.

In response to that claim, the Justice Department reiterated that Weiss has “full authority over this matter, including responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges as he deems appropriate. He needs no further approval to do so.”

The second IRS whistleblower, who asked the committee to keep his identity secret, described his persistent frustrations with the way the Hunter Biden case was handled, dating back to the Trump administration under Attorney General William Barr. He said he started the investigation into Hunter Biden in 2015 and delved deeply into his life and finances.

The individual said he was taken off the investigation in October 2022 and informed of the decision by officials at the IRS, but believes his removal was actually ordered by officials in the Justice Department. He provided no evidence that was the case, instead citing what he had witnessed internally as he pushed for various investigative steps. His supervisor, Shapley, was removed at the same time.

Democrats objected to the committee’s handling of the testimony, noting that the two individuals are just a fraction of the many investigators and officials who were involved in the Hunter Biden case. They suggested more testimony is needed.

“We do not object to the documents being reviewed publicly,” said Rep. Richard Neal, the top Democrat on the committee. “We object to the process. Clearly, the case is not ready. So many witnesses have never even been contacted.”

All the Democrats on the panel objected to the disclosure, calling the GOP efforts payback for their release in December of Trump’s tax records.

U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika must still approve the plea agreement that was reached following a lengthy federal investigation. It calls for the president’s son to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay taxes. Hunter Biden also must commit to court-imposed conditions that will spare him full prosecution on a felony gun charge.

The hearing is scheduled for July 26 as a combined initial appearance and plea agreement.

News of the plea deal Tuesday sparked criticism from Republicans who are pursuing their own congressional investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including foreign payments.

Attorney General Merrick Garland, traveling in Stockholm on Wednesday, said David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, was given “full authority to decide the matter as he decided was appropriate. And that’s what he’s done.”

Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have pointed to the case to raise questions about Justice Department independence as Trump faces a historic criminal indictment. The charges against Trump were filed by a special prosecutor appointed in an effort to avoid any perception of a political conflict.

The Hunter Biden charges, meanwhile, were filed by U.S. Attorney Weiss, who was appointed by Trump and kept on during the Biden administration to continue the investigation, some aspects of continue. Noreika was also appointed by Trump, in 2017.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer has said the guilty pleas are an effort to take responsibility for mistakes that he made “during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life,” and his understanding is that it wraps up the five-year investigation of his client.

Under a plea deal reached with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware — an office headed by Donald Trump appointee David Weiss — Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to pay taxes, which he later reimbursed. Biden also faces a felony gun charge — possession of a firearm by a person who is an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance” — but it is likely to be dismissed if he meets certain conditions under the plea agreement, according to court documents.

The federal gun charge, which makes it unlawful for a drug addict to possess a weapon, is a rarely used statute that is facing legal challenges and has recently been used as a catch-all charge against white supremacists.

Like the gun charge, the tax charges are rarely brought against first-time offenders and even more rarely result in jail time, Andrew Weissmann, a former FBI general counsel and NBC News contributor, tweeted Tuesday. “This is if anything harsh, not lenient,” he wrote.

For more on this story, go to NBC News.

Hunter Biden, 53, will plead guilty to the misdemeanor tax offenses as part of an agreement made public Tuesday. The agreement will also spare him prosecution on a charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user, as long as adheres to conditions set by prosecutors. It’s somewhat unusual to resolve a federal criminal case at the same time charges are filed in court, but it’s not totally unheard of.

The deal ends a long-running Justice Department investigation into Biden’s second son, who has acknowledged struggling with addiction following the 2015 death of his brother Beau Biden. It also averts a trial that would have generated days or weeks of distracting headlines for a White House that has strenuously sought to keep its distance from the Justice Department.

While it requires the younger Biden to admit guilt, the deal is narrowly focused on tax and weapons violations rather than anything broader or tied to the Democratic president. Nonetheless, former President Donald Trump and other Republicans are likely to continue to try to use the case to shine an unflattering spotlight on Joe Biden and his family business dealings and to raise questions about the independence of the Biden Justice Department.

“I’m very proud of my son,,” the president said when asked about his son at an AI forum in San Francisco on Tuesday.

The White House counsel’s office said in a statement that the president and first lady Jill Biden “love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life.”

Two people familiar with the investigation said the Justice Department would recommend 24 months of probation for the tax charges, meaning Hunter Biden will not face time in prison. But the decision to go along with any deal is up to the judge. The people were not authorized to speak publicly by name and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

He is to plead guilty to failing to pay more than $100,0000 in taxes on over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018, charges that carry a maximum possible penalty of a year in prison. The back taxes have since been paid, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

The gun charge states that Hunter Biden possessed a handgun, a Colt Cobra .38 Special, for 11 days in October 2018 despite knowing he was a drug user. The rarely filed count carries a maximum sentence of up to 10 years in prison, but the Justice Department said Hunter Biden had reached a pretrial agreement. This likely means as long as he adheres to the conditions, the case will be wiped from his record.

Christopher Clark, a lawyer for Hunter Biden, said in a statement that it was his understanding that the five-year investigation had now been resolved.

“I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life,” Clark said. “He looks forward to continuing his recovery and moving forward.”

The agreement comes as the Justice Department pursues perhaps the most consequential case in its history against Trump, the first former president to face federal criminal charges. The resolution of Hunter Biden’s case comes just days after a 37-count indictment came down against former Trump for mishandling classified documents on his Florida estate. It was filed by a special counsel, appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland to avoid any potential conflict of interest in the Justice Department.

That indictment has nevertheless brought an onslaught of Republican criticism of “politicization” of the Justice Department. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans continue to pursue their own investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including foreign payments.

Republicans on Tuesday called the federal charges another example of “a two-tiered justice system.”

Rep. James Comer, the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said the younger Biden is “getting away with a slap on the wrist,” despite investigations in Congress that GOP lawmakers say show — but have not yet provided evidence of — a pattern of corruption involving the family’s financial ties.

“These charges against Hunter Biden and sweetheart plea deal have no impact on the Oversight Committee’s investigation,” he said in a statement Tuesday.

Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware, on the other hand, said the case was thoroughly investigated over five years by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a Delaware prosecutor judge appointed by Trump.

Resolution of the case, Coons said, “brings to a close a five-year investigation, despite the elaborate conspiracy theories spun by many who believed there would be much more to this.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was scheduled to campaign with the president Tuesday evening, reaffirmed his support for Biden’s reelection.

“Hunter changes nothing,” Newsom told The AP on Tuesday.

Misdemeanor tax cases aren’t common, and most that are filed end with a sentence that doesn’t include time behind bars, said Caroline Ciraolo, an attorney who served as head of the Justice Department’s tax division from 2015 to 2017. An expected federal conviction “is not a slap on the wrist,” she said.

Gun possession charges that aren’t associated with another firearm crime are also uncommon, said Keith Rosen, a past head of the criminal division in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware. For people without a significant criminal history, the total number of multiple types of illegal possession cases filed every year in Delaware amounts to a handful, he said.

The Justice Department investigation into the president’s son burst into public view in December 2020, one month after the 2020 election, when Hunter Biden revealed that he had received a subpoena as part of the department’s scrutiny of his taxes. The subpoena sought information on the younger Biden’s business dealings with a number of entities, including Burisma, a Ukraine gas company on whose board he sat. A federal grand jury in Delaware heard testimony related to his taxes and foreign business transactions.

In February 2021, the department sought the resignation of most Trump-era U.S. attorneys, as is customary in a new presidential administration, but made a point of noting that it was leaving Weiss in place as a way to ensure continuity in the probe.

At a congressional hearing last August, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the investigation remained active out of the bureau’s Baltimore field office and said it was a matter that “I expect our folks to pursue aggressively.”

Garland pledged not to interfere in the probe at another hearing in March. An unnamed IRS special agent, though, later alleged mishandling of the investigation in a letter to Congress in which he sought whistleblower protection.

The younger Biden joined the board of Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then Barack Obama’s vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. Trump and his allies have long argued, without evidence, that Hunter Biden’s work in Ukraine influenced the Obama administration’s policies.

Years before the case was brought, Hunter Biden surfaced as a central character in the first impeachment case against Trump, who in an apparent bid to boost his own reelection bid had asked Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a telephone call to announce an investigation into the younger Biden.

Republicans later sought to make Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine a prominent issue during the 2020 presidential election.

In October of that year, the New York Post reported that it had received from Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani a copy of a hard drive of a laptop that Hunter Biden had dropped off 18 months earlier at a Delaware computer repair shop and never retrieved.

The story was greeted with skepticism due to questions about the laptop’s origins, including Giuliani’s involvement, and because top officials in the Trump administration had already warned that Russia was working to denigrate Joe Biden ahead of the November election. No evidence has emerged of any Russian connection to the laptop or to emails found on the device.

“First of all, my son has done nothing wrong,” Biden said in an interview with Stephanie Ruhle, host of “The 11th Hour on MSNBC.” “I trust him. I have faith in him.” 

Asked how charges against his son could impact his presidency, Biden said he stands by Hunter.

“It impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him,” the president said. 

Federal prosecutors are weighing whether to charge Hunter Biden with two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge, also a potential felony. Hunter Biden has said he has since reconciled delinquent tax filings.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

Attorneys for Hunter Biden met with Department of Justice prosecutors Wednesday to discuss criminal charges that might be filed against President Joe Biden‘s son, NBC News reported, citing sources.

Hunter Biden has been under investigation since 2018 by the office of U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, a Trump appointee.

Prosecutors have considered charging Hunter with four criminal counts, NBC reported last week, including two counts of misdemeanor failure to file taxes. The third charge would be a felony count of tax evasion in connection with a business expense.

The fourth charge would be a felony related to an alleged false statement related to a gun purchase in 2018, when Hunter wrote on a form that he was neither addicted to nor abusing any unlawful substance. At the time, Hunter was using cocaine, he has since admitted.

NBC also reported that two senior law enforcement sources said there is “growing frustration” inside the FBI because the majority of the investigation by bureau agents had been completed a year or so ago.

His lawyers also want Congress to take action against Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene for her statements about him.

Letters sent Monday morning to the House Ethics Committee and the Treasury Department’s Office of Inspector General and obtained by NBC News are among the latest efforts in an increasingly public and aggressive strategy from Biden’s legal team, led by attorney Abbe Lowell.

Read more at NBCNews.com.

The possible charges are two misdemeanor counts for failure to file taxes, a single felony count of tax evasion related to a business expense for one year of taxes, and the gun charge, also a potential felony.

Two senior law enforcement sources told NBC News about “growing frustration” inside the FBI because investigators finished the bulk of their work on the case about a year ago. A senior law enforcement source said the IRS finished its investigation more than a year ago. 

The Washington Post previously reported that federal investigators believed they had gathered enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax crimes and a false statement related to a gun purchase.

The decision on which charges to file, if any, will be made by U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and retained by the Biden administration to continue the Hunter Biden investigation. There are no indications a final decision has been made, said the two sources familiar with the matter.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

They are alleged to have been paid after the associate, Rob Walker, was wired $3 million in March 2017 from a Chinese energy company affiliated with another company that Biden had been doing business with. The recipients of the $1.3 million in payments were Biden, his uncle James Biden and Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter’s brother Beau Biden, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), said.

“It is unclear what services were provided to obtain this exorbitant amount of money,” Comer said.

While the $3 million figure and the payments to Hunter Biden were reported almost a year ago, Comer’s memorandum highlighted what the committee described as “new evidence” obtained from a subpoena of Walker’s bank records — two payments totaling $35,000 to Hallie Biden in 2017.

A lawyer for Hunter Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and a representative for James Biden declined to comment. An attempt to reach Hallie Biden for comment was unsuccessful.

Read the full story on NBCNews.com here.

In a separate letter, Hunter Biden’s attorneys also asked Fox News host Tucker Carlson to retract and apologize for what they say are false and defamatory claims made repeatedly about him on-air, including implying without evidence that he had unauthorized access to classified documents found at his father’s home.

The request for a criminal inquiry, which comes as Hunter Biden faces his own tax evasion investigation by the Justice Department, does not mean federal prosecutors will open a probe or take any other action. But it nonetheless represents a concerted shift in strategy and a rare public response by the younger Biden and his legal team to years of attacks by Republican officials and conservative media, scrutiny expected to continue now that the GOP has taken over the House.

It also represents the latest salvo in the long-running laptop saga, which began with a New York Post story in October 2020 that detailed some of the emails it says were found on the device related to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealings. It was swiftly seized on by Trump as a campaign issue during the presidential election that year.

The letter, signed by prominent Washington attorney Abbe Lowell, seeks an investigation into, among others, former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, Trump’s longtime lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Giuliani’s own attorney and the Wilmington computer repair shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, who has said Hunter Biden dropped a laptop off at his store in April 2019 and never returned to pick it up.

The letter cites passages from Mac Isaac’s book in which he admitted reviewing private and sensitive material from Biden’s laptop, including a file titled “income.pdf.” It notes that Mac Isaac sent a copy of the laptop data to Giuliani’s lawyer, Robert Costello, who in turn shared it with Giuliani, a close ally of Trump’s who at the time was pushing discredited theories about the younger Biden.

Giuliani provided the information to a reporter at the New York Post, which first wrote about the laptop, and also to Bannon, according to the letter. Hunter Biden never consented to any of his personal information being accessed or shared in that manner, his lawyer says.

“This failed dirty political trick directly resulted in the exposure, exploitation, and manipulation of Mr. Biden’s private and personal information,” the letter says, adding, “Politicians and the news media have used this unlawfully accessed, copied, distributed, and manipulated data to distort the truth and cause harm to Mr. Biden.”

Mac Isaac declined to comment when reached by The Associated Press on Wednesday evening. Costello, asked to comment on behalf of him and Giuliani, called the letter “a frivolous legal document” and said it “reeks of desperation because they know judgment day is coming for the Bidens.”

A lawyer who represented Bannon at a trial in Washington, D.C., last year did not immediately return a call seeking comment. A Fox News representative had no immediate comment.

The letter to the Justice Department was addressed to its top national security official, Matthew Olsen. It cites possible violations of statutes prohibiting the unauthorized access of a computer or stored electronic communication, as well as the transport of stolen data across state lines and the publication of restricted personal data with the intent to intimidate or threaten.

It also asks prosecutors to investigate whether any of the data was manipulated or tampered with in any way.

“The actions described above more than merit a full investigation and, depending on the resulting facts, may merit prosecution under various statutes. It is not a common thing for a private person and his counsel to seek someone else being investigated, but the actions and motives here require it,” Lowell wrote in the letter.

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment.

Separate letters requesting investigations were also sent to the Delaware state attorney general’s office and to the Internal Revenue Service. Spokespeople there did not immediately return emails seeking comment.

But the midterm results have emboldened a White House that has long prepared for this moment. Republicans secured much smaller margins than anticipated, and aides to President Joe Biden and other Democrats believe voters punished the GOP for its reliance on conspiracy theories and Donald Trump-fueled lies over the 2020 election.

They see it as validation for the administration’s playbook for the midterms and going forward to focus on legislative achievements and continue them, in contrast to Trump-aligned candidates whose complaints about the president’s son played to their most loyal supporters and were too far in the weeds for the average American. The Democrats retained control of the Senate, and the GOP’s margin in the House is expected to be the slimmest majority in two decades.

Business Sep 19, 2022

Senate Republicans Seek Special Counsel Authority for Prosecutor in Hunter Biden Criminal Probe

Donald Trump Sep 15, 2021

FEC Says Twitter Acted Lawfully in Restricting the New York Post's Article on Hunter Biden

“If you look back, we picked up seats in New York, New Jersey, California,” said Mike DuHaime, a Republican strategist and public affairs executive. “These were not voters coming to the polls because they wanted Hunter Biden investigated — far from it. They were coming to the polls because they were upset about inflation. They’re upset about gas prices. They’re upset about what’s going on with the war in Ukraine.”

But House Republicans used their first news conference after clinching the majority to discuss presidential son Hunter Biden and the Justice Department, renewing long-held grievances about what they claim is a politicized law enforcement agency and a bombshell corruption case overlooked by Democrats and the media.

“From their first press conference, these congressional Republicans made clear that they’re going to do one thing in this new Congress, which is investigations, and they’re doing this for political payback for Biden’s efforts on an agenda that helps working people,” said Kyle Herrig, the founder of the Congressional Integrity Project, a newly relaunched, multimillion-dollar effort by Democratic strategists to counter the onslaught of House GOP probes.

Inside the White House, the counsel’s office added staff months ago and beefed up its communication efforts, and staff members have been deep into researching and preparing for the onslaught. They’ve worked to try to identify their own vulnerabilities and plan effective responses. But anything the House seeks related to Hunter Biden, who is not a White House staffer, will come from his attorneys, who have declined to respond to the allegations.

Rep. James Comer, incoming chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said there are “troubling questions” of the utmost importance about Hunter Biden’s business dealings and one of the president’s brothers, James Biden, that require deeper investigation. He said they were examining the president, too.

“Rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government is the primary mission of the Oversight Committee,” said Comer, R-Ky. “As such, this investigation is a top priority.”

Republican legislators promised a trove of new information this past week, but what they have presented so far has been a condensed review of a few years’ worth of complaints about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, going back to conspiracy theories raised by Trump.

Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian gas company Burisma in 2014, around the time his father, then vice president, was helping conduct the Obama administration’s foreign policy with Ukraine. Senate Republicans have said the appointment may have posed a conflict of interest, but they did not present evidence that the hiring influenced U.S. policies, and they did not implicate Joe Biden in any wrongdoing.

Republican lawmakers and their staff for the past year have been analyzing messages and financial transactions found on a laptop that belonged to Hunter Biden. They long have discussed issuing congressional subpoenas to foreign entities that did business with him, and they recently brought on James Mandolfo, a former federal prosecutor, to assist with the investigation as general counsel for the Oversight Committee.

The difference now is that Republicans will have subpoena power to follow through.

“The Republicans are going to go ahead,” said Tom Davis, a Republican lawyer who specializes in congressional investigations and legislative strategy. “I think their members are enthusiastic about going after this stuff … there are a lot of unanswered questions. Look, the 40-year trend is parties under-investigate their own and over-investigate the other party. It didn’t start here.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre dismissed the GOP focus on investigations as “on-brand” thinking.

“They said they were going to fight inflation, they said they were going to make that a priority, then they get the majority and their top priority is actually not focusing on the American family, but focusing on the president’s family,” she said.

Even some newly elected Republicans are pushing back against the idea.

“The top priority is to deal with inflation and the cost of living. … What I don’t want to see is what we saw in the Trump administration, where Democrats went after the president and the administration incessantly,” Rep.-elect Mike Lawler of New York said on CNN.

Hunter Biden’s taxes and foreign business work are already under federal investigation, with a grand jury in Delaware hearing testimony in recent months.

While he never held a position on the presidential campaign or in the White House, his membership on the board of the Ukrainian energy company and his efforts to strike deals in China have long raised questions about whether he traded on his father’s public service, including reported references in his emails to the “big guy.”

Joe Biden has said he’s never spoken to his son about his foreign business, and there are no indications that the federal investigation involves the president.

Trump and his supporters, meanwhile, have advanced a widely discredited theory that Biden pushed for the firing of Ukraine’s top prosecutor to protect his son and Burisma from investigation. Biden did indeed press for the prosecutor’s firing, but that was a reflection of the official position of not only the Obama administration but many Western countries and because the prosecutor was perceived as soft on corruption.

House Republicans also have signaled upcoming investigations into immigration, government spending and parents’ rights. White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Chris Wray have been put on notice as potential witnesses.

Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, incoming Judiciary Committee chairman, has long complained of what he says is a politicized Justice Department and the ongoing probes into Trump.

On Friday, Garland appointed a special counsel to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

Trump, in a speech Friday night at his Mar-a-Lago estate, slammed the development as “the latest in a long series of witch hunts.”

Of Joe and Hunter Biden, he asked, “Where’s their special prosecutor?”

Matt Mackowiak, a Republican political strategist, said it’s one thing if the investigations into Hunter Biden stick to corruption questions, but if it veers into the kind of mean-spirited messaging that has been floating around in far-right circles, “I don’t know that the public will have much patience for that.”

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Associated Press Writer Eric Tucker contributed to this report.