What did the amicus curiae brief filed by Rep. Jason Smith (R-Missouri) contain that Hunter Biden’s attorneys so aggressively sought to block it from the court record?
An attorney for the firm representing Hunter Biden allegedly misrepresented herself as an attorney for the House Ways and Means Committee to convince the court to pull the amicus brief filed by its chairman, Rep. Smith.
“Mr. [Theodore] Kittila asserts that an individual associated with the firm representing Defendant called the Clerk’s Office pretending to be associated with Mr. Kittila and requesting the amicus materials be removed from the docket, which the Clerk’s Office did,” Judge Maryellen Noreika wrote in a court order. “The response from Defendant’s counsel on this issue was that ‘[a]s far as [he was] aware, the managing attorney from Latham called the clerk’s office to note that personal tax information of the defendant had been filed in a non-reacted [sic] manner and to inquire regarding having the information sealed’ and that ‘the clerk took the filing down on their own accord.’” (READ MORE: The Seventh Granddaughter and Other Realities Dodged by Joe Biden)
The lawyer allegedly misrepresenting herself, Jessica Bengels, denies the allegations. She works in litigation services for Latham & Watkins, where her she ironically “oversees the filing process to ensure compliance with all court requirements.”
The judge’s order added, “Defendant’s counsel also added that he hoped Mr. Kittila had an ‘affidavit from the clerk in support of’ his version of events. The Court has discussed the matter with the relevant individuals in the Clerk’s Office and has been informed that the caller, Ms. Jessica Bengels, represented that she worked with Mr. Kittila and requested the amicus materials be taken down because they contained sensitive grand jury, taxpayer and social security information. It appears that the caller misrepresented her identity and who she worked for in an attempt to improperly convince the Clerk’s Office to remove the amicus materials from the docket.”
If Bengels did indeed act in furtherance of this bizarre scheme, then the question arises as to what, precisely, did she wish to hide from the court?
Smith’s amicus curiae brief highlights “political interference which calls into question the propriety of the investigation.” Specifically, he cites the testimony of two Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers who appeared before his committee. Several times in the document Smith noted that he requested Attorney General Merrick Garland, whose Justice Department ostensibly acts in an adversarial role vis-à-vis Hunter Biden in the tax, guns, and drugs case, and U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the supposed prosecutor, to submit the whistleblower testimony and related material to the court. They did not do this.
The Smith brief contains no bombshells, at least no unexploded ones. The material it relies upon — televised testimony widely reported on — remains a matter of public record even if some tried to exclude it from this court’s record. Why do so many try so hard to exclude it? Because it buttresses the idea that the plea agreement, tossed out by Judge Maryellen Noreika, more closely resembles the work of political fixers than a compromise between prosecutors holding all the cards and a defense that strangely gave up nothing to win the hand.
Ironically, whistleblowers Gary Shapley Jr. and Joseph Ziegler alleged that investigators acted in a manner contrary to past practice in, among other instances of strange behavior, slow-walking the case to the extent that the statue of limitations on certain matters may have been deliberately allowed to expire. The behavior of Garland and Weiss indicates more of the same.
In Garland and Weiss’ refusing to pass on to the court the whistleblower testimony, and Bengels of the defense trying to remove the whistleblower material from the court record (whether through skullduggery as alleged or legitimate means as she contends), one sees a strange confluence of interests from both the defense and the Justice Department that gets to the heart of the whistleblowers’ testimony itself.
They alleged extraordinarily bizarre behavior by the supposed investigators of the son of the president of the United States. The behavior of Weiss and Garland in not presenting the whistleblower testimony to Judge Noreika’s court, as well as the efforts of the defense to suppress that testimony, certainly qualifies as extraordinarily bizarre behavior.
So strange that the case stands as perhaps the only one in 2023 in which the prosecution wanted the defense to succeed more than the defense did.
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