Conservative group appeals DOJ request in Hunter Biden probe

A conservative legal group has reiterated its request for Department of Justice records related to the Hunter Biden investigation after a federal judge denied an initial bid to compel the disclosures before the first son’s July 26 plea hearing.

Lawyers for the Heritage Foundation asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Wednesday to reconsider Judge Dabney Friedrich’s order to hold back thousands of records, court filings show.

The ruling withheld more than 2,500 pages of documents the group had requested under the Freedom of Information Act for internal communications about the five-year probe into Hunter Biden’s alleged tax and financial crimes.

In a separate filing on Thursday, Heritage also asked for an injunction from the judge’s order and demanded “a narrow subset of the records” not exempt from FOIA about any request for special counsel status by Delaware US Attorney David Weiss, who led the Hunter investigation.

IRS agents who testified before the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday said Weiss admitted in a meeting last year with investigators that his request for special counsel authority was denied — and that he was blocked from charging the first son outside of Delaware twice by US attorneys that President Biden appointed.

Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland have denied the IRS whistleblowers’ account and maintained the Delaware office had “full authority” to charge the president’s son.

The contradictory statements between DOJ and the IRS agents makes it all the more critical that the record be set straight for the federal judge presiding over Hunter’s plea hearing, Heritage lawyers argued on Thursday.

“They are the most critical of the important records … They are the starting point in untangling the Gordian knot that is the conflict between the Attorney General, US Attorney Weiss, and the IRS Whistleblowers on the critical questions at issue here,” wrote attorneys Samuel Dewey, Eric Cornett, Daniel Mauler and Roman Jankowski.

“These records should exist if the Attorney General has told the truth and followed Department procedure,” they added. “Moreover, these records are almost certainly non-exempt; there is nothing deliberative or tending to interfere with law enforcement in a written decision on the allocation of authority within the Department.”

Hunter Biden, 53, entered into a probation-only plea deal on June 20 with the Justice Department, for which he is expected to accept guilt for two misdemeanor charges of willful failure to pay taxes and enter a diversion program for lying about his drug use on a gun purchase form while addicted to crack cocaine.

The IRS whistleblowers have said prosecutors initially sought felony charges for the first son over $2.2 million in missed tax payments, and that federal authorities stymied further attempts to investigate serious financial crimes.

Justice Department lawyers said they oppose Heritage’s motion after having argued against releasing the records before conducting a full review with the relevant offices and handling earlier FOIA requests on cases involving former President Donald Trump.

Friedrich sided with the federal attorneys in her Wednesday opinion, saying Heritage’s FOIA “extra-expedited” requests were “jumping the line ahead of other requests deemed similarly time sensitive.”

The judge also disagreed that production of the records was necessary before Hunter Biden’s plea hearing.

“The public debate inside and outside of Congress over Hunter Biden’s actions, his criminal prosecution, and any involvement therein by the President of the United States will not end on July 26, 2023,” Friedrich wrote. “Indeed, the issue may become even more salient over time as relevant investigations continue.”

But Heritage’s lawyers said the records could potentially influence Judge Maryellen Noreika’s decision whether or not to accept the plea, comparing Biden’s alleged interference in the case to the 1920s Teapot Dome scandal under former President Warren Harding, during which Interior Secretary Albert Fall was convicted of having taken bribes from oil companies to lease petroleum reserves in Wyoming and California.

An FBI informant file released Thursday shows Joe and Hunter Biden were implicated in a $10 million bribery scheme involving the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings.