Attorney General Merrick Garland told lawmakers during a Wednesday Judiciary Committee hearing he “[could not] recollect” if he had a conversation with the FBI about its probe into Hunter Biden.
“Have you had personal contact with anyone at FBI headquarters about the Hunter Biden investigation?” Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA) asked Garland.
“I don’t recollect the answer to that question, but the FBI works for the Justice Department,” he replied.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry,” Johnson interrupted. “You don’t recollect? You don’t recollect whether you’ve talked with anybody at FBI headquarters about an investigation of the president’s son?”
“I don’t believe that I did,” Garland affirmatively replied. “I promised the Senate when I came before it for confirmation that I would leave Mr. Weiss in place and that I would not interfere with his investigation.”
Constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley said Garland wrongly alleged that confirming such conversations would abridge confidential communications. “There is no question that he can answer whether such conversations occurred,” he said. “When Bill Barr testified as Attorney General he confirmed subjects even in communications with the President while declining details on conversations.”
House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) ripped Garland during the hearing for operating a two-tier system of justice:
Even with a face-saving indictment last week of Hunter Biden, everyone knows the fix is in. Four and a half years, four and a half years the Department of Justice has been investigating Mr. Biden in an investigation run by David Weiss, an investigation that limited the number of witnesses agents could interview, an investigation that prohibited agents from referring to the president as the “big guy” in any of the interviews they did get to do, an investigation that curtailed attempts to interview Mr. Biden by giving the transit Team Secret a heads up, an investigation that notified Mr. Biden’s defense counsel about a pending search warrant, an investigation run by Mr. Weiss, run by Mr. Weiss, where they told the Congress three different stories in 33 days.
In two letters to Congress, Weiss contradicted himself about whether he was the deciding authority to charge Hunter Biden. Weiss ultimately reversed his position to agree with Garland, both claiming Weiss was the sole authority to charge Hunter Biden, a claim contradicted by IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley and his boss, Special Agent in Charge Darrell Waldon, who confirmed Weiss did not have authority to charge Hunter Biden.
RELATED — IRS Whistleblower: My Contemporaneous Documentation Contradicts Garland, Weiss on Hunter Case
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.