Top Republican leaders on three House of Representatives panels are probing the Department of Justice (DOJ) for answers about an alleged “sweetheart deal” given to Hunter Biden by the agency.
In a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), and House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) demanded an explanation of several “atypical” provisions in the DOJ’s plea agreement with Mr. Biden (pdf).
“Given recent unusual events relating to the Department’s plea and pretrial diversion agreements with Mr. Biden, we write to better understand the Department’s decision to sign off on such apparently atypical agreements,” they wrote.
In 2018, the IRS began an investigation into Mr. Biden, ultimately recommending three felony tax charges, according to IRS investigators and whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler.
However, prosecutors instead offered Mr. Biden a deal that Republicans decried as a slap on the wrist. In the version initially presented to the public, Mr. Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax crimes and would have an unrelated felony firearms charge wiped through a pretrial diversion program.
That deal, despite criticisms, was expected to breeze through a federal court during a July 26 hearing. But it faced pushback from Judge Maryellen Noreika, who found the deal “nonstandard” and noted that it was much broader than other deals of its kind and much broader than the deal first presented to the public.
Rather than wiping away only the firearms charge, the pretrial diversion agreement offered to Mr. Biden by DOJ prosecutors would give President Joe Biden’s son nearly unlimited immunity from other tax, drug, and firearm crimes committed between 2014 and 2019.
Judge Noreika expressed concerns that the “broad” nature of the agreement could limit the government’s options to pursue future cases with new evidence, including potential violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act by Mr. Biden.
She accused lawyers of trying to have her “rubber stamp” the peculiar deal by twisting federal criminal court rules to cut her out of the process.
In their letter to Mr. Garland, the Republican chairmen requested an explanation of sections of the agreement that stood out to them as particularly odd, which they said raised “serious concerns” about the DOJ’s handling of the investigation.
By Joseph Lord
