David Weiss asked officials at the Department of Justice headquarters to grant him the power to prosecute Hunter Biden outside his jurisdiction in February 2022, but the DOJ was not willing to provide him with the authority right away.
Instead, according to a transcript of Weiss's congressional testimony reviewed by the Washington Examiner, DOJ officials directed Weiss to follow a "typical process" that lasted weeks, and Weiss never ended up acting on his request until the following year.
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Weiss's testimony came in the form of a closed-door interview with the House Judiciary Committee this week, where lawmakers repeatedly challenged him on the issue of his authority level over the case.
In one combative exchange, Weiss insisted the DOJ's instructions that he follow a process did not constitute the department denying him the authority he asked for.
"You want me to say it's a denial, but it's not," Weiss said. "Not when I know that, weeks later, I was specifically told, 'You can proceed.'"
He characterized the DOJ officials as cooperative, saying they told him in May 2022, after he followed their requested process, that he could have the authority he needed. Weiss conceded, however, that he "never executed on that assurance that [he] would have the authority."
Weiss stated that he asked the DOJ officials for “515 Special Attorney authority” in February 2022.
Authority under that federal statute would have permitted Weiss, who was the U.S. attorney in Delaware at the time, to prosecute Hunter Biden in jurisdictions outside of his own. Weiss's prosecutors and IRS investigators were at that point weighing charges against Hunter Biden for alleged tax offenses that occurred in California and Washington, D.C.
Weiss detailed the conversation in early 2022 in which he initially asked for more authority, saying the DOJ’s principal associate deputy attorney general instructed him to “proceed in the way it would typically be done,” which involved first contacting the U.S. attorneys in the respective districts and seeking their partnership on charges.
“We talked a bit about the fact that it’s often the case in D.C. that a DOJ component, whether it’s Tax Division or Public Integrity, would develop a case and reach out to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C. and give them an opportunity to participate,” Weiss said. “So the discussion was let’s proceed in a typical fashion. ... And, as you know, ultimately — this didn’t happen in this conversation but down the road — I was given the authority to proceed if I chose to do so.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss special counsel in August 2023. Garland said at the time that Weiss had requested special counsel authority days earlier. The authority Garland granted Weiss with the special counsel appointment functioned similar to "special attorney" authority in that it allowed Weiss to bring charges outside of Delaware if he saw fit.
Two IRS criminal investigators involved in the case first brought the controversy surrounding Weiss's authority to light this spring. They alleged the DOJ “slow-walked” the investigation and suggested that Democrat-aligned political appointees working in the department may have impeded Weiss's prosecution to benefit the Biden family.
The pair of whistleblowers claimed that Weiss asked for elevated authority and that the DOJ denied it. Instead, they said, DOJ officials instructed Weiss in early 2022 "to follow DOJ's process,” which they said was a blow to the case because the statute of limitations for charges related to 2014 and 2015 would expire that year.
“The purposeful exclusion of the 2014 and 2015 years sanitized the most substantive criminal conduct and concealed material facts,” Gary Shapley, one of the IRS whistleblowers, said.
Committee members asked Weiss about the statutes of limitations for those two years. He acknowledged that the statutes had lapsed and that he would address that fact in a report about his prosecutorial decisions that he will be required to submit to Garland at the conclusion of his investigation. Garland has said he will make the report public.
"I’ll address it in the report, but even though the statute of limitations has lapsed [for 2014 and 2015] and even though charges won’t be filed, if there were to be an outstanding tax prosecution, there is no reason to believe that evidence pertaining to prior years, or witnesses involved in prior years, wouldn’t be part of that litigation," Weiss said.
House Republicans have long wanted to question Weiss as part of their investigation into whether the DOJ extended Hunter Biden preferential treatment to protect him and President Joe Biden, an allegation that the IRS whistleblowers' testimony significantly bolstered.
Joe Biden is the subject of a House impeachment inquiry over allegations that when he was vice president and had significant influence over foreign policy, he used his position to help Hunter Biden, as well as other Biden family members, to profit through lucrative foreign business deals.
The GOP has zeroed in on Weiss's authority over the Hunter Biden case as a top issue after having exhaustive and at times muddled back-and-forth communication with him and the DOJ regarding the different special authority designations and when Weiss may have sought them.
Those conversations extended into the interview this week.
Behind the weedy communications, however, the heart of the issue lies in the unaddressed period from February 2022, when, according to Weiss, he asked for more authority, and June 2023, when he filed a plea deal with Hunter Biden that a judge would later unravel. The deal charged Hunter Biden with two tax misdemeanors and dropped an unrelated gun-possession charge against him despite the IRS whistleblowers revealing that more severe charges for tax crimes from 2014 to 2019 had been in play.
Weiss declined to comment on most other questions outside of the topic of his authority level, citing the DOJ's long-standing position that it does not comment on open investigations and litigation.
The much-anticipated report Weiss will prepare at the end of his investigation, which is expected to address the open questions about the Hunter Biden case, may not surface anytime soon, either.
The special counsel told the committee he is still looking for staff, saying, "I continue to work on building the team, but I'm not going to get into the particulars."
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Asked about the timetable for the case, he said, "I’m not going to put a time frame on it. As I said previously in response to counsel’s questions, we plan to move as efficiently as possible."
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the DOJ for comment.