Prosecutor rebuts IRS official's account of request in Hunter Biden case

WASHINGTON — David Weiss, the federal prosecutor in Delaware who has led the criminal investigation of Hunter Biden, on Monday rebutted a key element of testimony to Congress by an IRS official who said that Weiss complained about being blocked from pursuing the case the way he wanted.

In a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Weiss said he had never asked Justice Department officials to give him special counsel status to pursue the case, contradicting testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee by the IRS official, Gary Shapley, who said Weiss had sought that status and been turned down.

Weiss suggested that Shapley might have misunderstood him during an October meeting. Weiss, U.S. attorney for Delaware, who was appointed to the role under President Donald Trump, said in the letter that he had approached a department higher-up about the possibility of requesting status as a special attorney, not as a special counsel.

Deputizing a federal prosecutor as a special attorney is distinct from making one a special counsel. The special attorney provision is, in essence, a workaround that allows an outsider to intervene in cases that span multiple jurisdictions or have special conditions. The special counsel regulations, by contrast, contain internal Justice Department reporting requirements and congressional oversight provisions.

"To clarify an apparent misperception and to avoid future confusion, I wish to make one point clear: In this case, I have not requested special counsel designation," Weiss told Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the top GOP member on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Instead, Weiss said he "had discussions with departmental officials regarding potential appointment" as a special attorney, "which would have allowed me to file charges in a district outside my own without the partnership of the local U.S. attorney."

Weiss added in the letter to Graham that he had "never been denied the authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction."

Weiss has sought to defend the integrity of the five-year investigation after a plea deal announced last month under which Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and accept terms that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge.

Republicans have assailed it as a "sweetheart deal" for the president's son and have used Shapley's testimony to promote the idea that political interference played a role in the outcome. Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., has left open the possibility of pursuing impeachment charges against Attorney General Merrick Garland.

In Monday's letter — a follow-up to a less-detailed response he sent to House Republicans in late June — Weiss backed up an earlier statement by Garland that he had been given full authority in the case. At the same time, Weiss acknowledged publicly for the first time that he had considered seeking a way to bring potentially more serious tax charges against Hunter Biden outside Delaware.

Weiss, who has described the Hunter Biden investigation as "ongoing," did not say if he had followed through and requested to be appointed special attorney to the career official who served as his contact at Justice Department headquarters.

Nor did he explicitly address a key assertion made by Shapley: that Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in California and Washington had discouraged Weiss from prosecuting Hunter Biden on felony tax charges stemming from a period when the president's son was earning millions working with foreign-controlled businesses and investors.

The investigation was initiated by the Trump Justice Department in 2018 and eventually handed to Weiss, a Republican whose reputation for nonpartisanship had earned him the support of Delaware's two Democratic senators during his confirmation a few months earlier.

After Joe Biden was elected, the department's interim leadership kept Weiss in place and in charge of the inquiry. Garland, after being confirmed, continued that arrangement and was eager to avoid any suggestion of political meddling.

Shapley, testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee in May under what Republicans said were whistleblower protections, said he and other investigators had witnessed Weiss saying last year that he would not be the "deciding official" regarding whether to prosecute Hunter Biden. Shapley said Weiss had been turned down when he sought special counsel status after being told by local prosecutors that he could not bring charges. House Republicans released the testimony last month.

Shapley recounted arguing in meetings with Weiss and other prosecutors to aggressively pursue charges against Hunter Biden stemming from his failure to pay taxes in 2014 and 2015, two years not covered under his agreement to plead guilty on the misdemeanor tax charges. During those years, he was earning income from work for a Ukraine-based energy company and Chinese clients that Shapley suggested was being channeled through entities that had a presence in Washington and the Los Angeles area.

In mid-2022, Weiss reached out to the top federal prosecutor in Washington, Matthew Graves, to ask his office to pursue charges and was rebuffed, according to Shapley's testimony. A similar request to prosecutors in the Central District of California, which includes Los Angeles, was also rejected, Shapley testified.

A second former IRS official, who has not been identified, told House Republicans the same story. That episode was confirmed independently to The New York Times by a person with knowledge of the situation.

Shapley, who oversaw the agency's role in the investigation of Hunter Biden's taxes, also told House committee aides that his criticism of the Justice Department led to him being denied a promotion. In his testimony, he blamed Weiss for criticizing him to his superiors.

Weiss denied that charge in a June 30 letter to Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chair of the House Judiciary Committee, saying he "did not retaliate" against Shapley.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.