Either Delaware US Attorney David Weiss was lying to the IRS team investigating Hunter Biden, or Attorney General Merrick Garland lied to Congress.
Either way, Justice Department fumbling has already let Hunter escape justice for several years of tax crimes.
Which means the judge overseeing his potential plea deal must wait until Congress can get to the bottom of this mess.
According to whistleblower Gary Shapley, Weiss in January 2022 sought to indict Hunter on felony charges for 2014 tax evasion (and misdemeanor charges for 2015) on his windfall from Ukraine — but then told the team he couldn’t, because US Attorney for DC Matthew Graves (a Joe Biden appointee who had jurisdiction because that was Hunter’s legal residence in those years) wouldn’t go along.
So the statute of limitations expired, and so (in Shapley’s words) the Biden Justice Department “sanitized the most substantive criminal conduct” in Hunter’s case.
At least five other witnesses heard Weiss’ words, says Shapley.
Weiss also apparently got similarly stonewalled on filing California charges.
Yet Garland, on repeated prompting before Congress, testified that Weiss didn’t need any outside OKs to charge Hunter.
So either the AG committed perjury about how he’d hemmed in the guy in charge of prosecuting Hunter, or that guy — the very one proposing the First Son’s no-prison, no-real-pain plea deal now — was protecting his supposed target, including by lying to his own investigators.
Yes, it’s possible Shapley is the liar, but his integrity has gone unimpeached ever since he stepped forward.
And Congress can easily call the five other witnesses to see if they back up his story.
As for Weiss, by the way: News accounts routinely call him a “Trump appointee,” but he’d become Acting US Attorney under President Barack Obama; Trump merely went with the guy already in the job. He’s a Delaware insider, not a Trumpie.
The Hunter plea deal is set to be finalized July 26.
It’ll be the rankest, most blatant injustice of this entire already-historic series of abuses if the courts let that go ahead before all of this is fully cleared up.
It’s past time for the stars (or the swamp) to stop aligning to let Hunter skate.
