U.S. Attorney for Washington, DC, Matthew Graves balked at partnering with then-U.S. Prosecutor David Weiss to bring tax charges in 2022 against Hunter Biden, broadly corroborating IRS whistleblowers’ claims Hunter Biden received preferential treatment.
“Mr. Weiss said that he had an investigation that he had been conducting,” Graves said on October 3 in a congressional testimony reviewed by Breitbart News. “Some of the charges related to that investigation needed to be venued out of the district, and he described the logistical support that he needed.”
Graves said it was “exceedingly rare” to partner with a prosecutor from a separate district. He said a normal situation would necessitate his office taking over the case or outside prosecutors would be granted special attorney status, enabling the case to be prosecuted in the D.C. jurisdiction.
“The challenge is — particularly when you’re talking about US attorney and US attorney — is you’re bringing in another chain of command. And once you’re partnered, you have to reach consensus,” Graves told investigators. “So, as a manager, in general, we don’t want to do that.”
File/Hunter Biden departs the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building and United States Courthouse on July 26, 2023 in Wilmington, Delaware. Biden pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges in a deal with prosecutors to avoid prosecution on an additional gun charge. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)
“And on our end of it, if it’s an ongoing investigation, there is no way, whether it’s three weeks, three months, if it’s been a multi-year investigation, that we can get up to speed on everything that has occurred beforehand. So you’re kind of buying a mansion without an inspection, and whatever problems exist, you are buying those,” he added.
During a ten minute phone call in late February or early March of 2022, Graves told investigators that Weiss said he needed help arranging a grand jury in D.C., and Graves’ deputies expressed a willingness to facilitate the prosecution of the president’s son. Graves said he then instructed the head of the criminal division in the DC office to form recommendations about whether to partner on the case. On Mach 19, 2022, Graves and five or six staff members met to weigh the decision.
Graves said his office decided not to partner with Weiss after a review of case materials. “My understanding at a high level is, there was some interaction with the [assistant US attorneys] in Delaware. They got some case-related or investigation-related material. I don’t know specifically who the individuals were that they interacted with or what materials they reviewed or gathered,” Graves said.
“I think the best way of characterizing the decision was, we instructed — I instructed to say that we weren’t going to pursue being a local counsel on the case,” Graves said. “Could I have told him, ‘No, we’re not going to support you, I’m not going to make my grand jury available’? I mean, I never considered it, but I guess I could’ve told him ‘no.’”
According to Weiss, it is common practice for prosecutors to request a partnership on a case outside of respective districts, contradicting Graves. “Common Departmental practice is to contact the United States Attorney’s Office for the district in question and determine whether it wants to partner on the case,” Weiss told House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) in June.
Attorney General Merrick Garland maintains that now-special counsel David Weiss had full authority to charge Hunter Biden in any jurisdiction he chose. “He was given complete authority to make all decisions on his own,” he said in June.
Graves defended Garland’s position: “As I understand the letters and the public reporting, he was given assurance by the attorney general, who heads our department, that he is going to be able to bring whatever charges wherever he wants to bring charges that he thinks are appropriate.”
File/Hunter Biden walks from Marine One upon arrival at Fort McNair, June 25, 2023, in Washington. Hunter Biden is expected to appear before a federal judge Wednesday, July 26 to plead guilty to two tax crimes and admit to possessing a gun as a drug user in a deal with the Justice Department that is likely going to spare him time behind bars. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
“So, I mean, I can — this has never happened, but I can make all kinds of determinations I want to make on my own. If the deputy attorney general or the attorney general calls me up and says, ‘You are going to do the opposite of what you said,’ I am going to do the opposite of what I said. That’s the way the department works,” Graves explained.
Weiss investigated Hunter Biden for five years for tax, gun, and Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations. The probe came to a head when IRS whistleblowers alleged in April that two Biden administration political appointees within the DOJ worked to block charges against Hunter Biden for tax violations against recommendations.
As the investigation progressed, Weiss never charged Hunter Biden in the jurisdiction of DC. Instead, he formed a sweetheart plea agreement with Hunter Biden that collapsed in July under judicial scrutiny. The agreement afforded Hunter Biden the ability to plead guilty for not paying taxes on over $1.5 million in income in 2017 and 2018, receiving probation rather than jail time. In addition, Weiss devised a separate diversion agreement that gave Hunter Biden immunity from potential future charges, including a provision to essentially wipe a felony gun violation from his record.
Weiss indicted Hunter Biden in September on three gun charges after Garland appointed Weiss to special counsel status.
Legal experts expected Weiss to indict the president’s son with tax violations in the near future.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.