Hunter Biden plea: Who is David Weiss, the US attorney who agreed to ‘sweetheart deal’?
Jerry Dunleavy
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David Weiss is the little-known United States attorney for Delaware who brought criminal charges against Hunter Biden amid whistleblower allegations that the Justice Department‘s investigation was politicized.
Hunter Biden reached a plea deal on federal charges related to tax crimes and the illegal purchase of a handgun, Weiss’s office wrote in a court filing on Tuesday.
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The experienced federal prosecutor, 66, was nominated by then-President Donald Trump in November 2017. Sens. Tom Carper (D-DE) and Chris Coons (D-DE) had urged Trump to accept Weiss for the role. He was easily confirmed by the Senate in February 2018.
Weiss had already taken over as acting U.S. attorney in March 2017. He had previously twice served as first assistant U.S. attorney under President George W. Bush from 2007 to 2009 and President Barack Obama from 2012 to 2018, and had been the acting and interim U.S. attorney under Obama from 2009 to 2011.
In February 2021, Joe Biden asked all Senate-confirmed U.S. attorneys appointed by Trump for their resignations, with the exception of Weiss.
On Tuesday, Weiss’s office announced Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of “willful failure to pay” his federal income taxes, and the Justice Department said he will be entering a “pretrial diversion agreement” pertaining to possession of a firearm “by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.”
Weiss’s office noted Biden had been hit with “two misdemeanor tax offenses and a felony firearm offense.” The Delaware federal prosecutor said that “the investigation is ongoing.
“Hunter Biden received taxable income in excess of $1.5 million annually in the calendar years 2017 and 2018,” Weiss’s office explained Tuesday. “Despite owing in excess of $100,000 in federal income taxes each year, he did not pay the income tax due either year.
“If convicted, he faces a maximum penalty of 12 months in prison on each of the tax charges and a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison on the firearm charge. Actual sentences for federal crimes are typically less than the maximum penalties.”
Following the announcement of the charges, Rep. James Comer (R-KY), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, called it a “sweetheart plea deal,” declaring: “Hunter Biden is getting away with a slap on the wrist.”
He promised the charges will have “no impact” on his committee’s investigation into the Biden family’s alleged “pattern of corruption, influence peddling, and possibly bribery.”
Republicans have long contended Hunter Biden’s business dealings in Ukraine and China indicate he may have committed crimes related to foreign lobbying or money laundering, but the new charges fell far short of that.
Biden’s attorney, Chris Clark, issued a statement claiming: “It is my understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland had repeatedly vowed to ensure that Weiss would be insulated from any political interference.
But IRS whistleblowers have alleged the Justice Department — specifically including the U.S. attorney’s office run by Weiss — mishandled the investigation.
A supervisory special agent (SSA) with the IRS’s criminal investigation (IRS-CI) division revealed to Congress earlier this year that he believed politics had infected the case.
The whistleblower’s lawyers told Congress in April his client’s “protected disclosures” lay out “examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.”
The IRS agent’s allegations also “involve failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition of the case” against Hunter Biden and “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee.”
A source familiar with the whistleblower letter confirmed to the Washington Examiner that Garland is the unnamed senior Biden official whose testimony before Congress is being challenged.
The whistleblower’s lawyer included a number of emails that his client had sent detailing what he saw as “unethical conduct” by the DOJ.
A second whistleblower, an IRS case agent, wrote last month that he was “left out on an island” when attempting to raise concerns about the investigation with senior leadership. He contended he had raised concerns that “I wasn’t able to perform my job adequately because of the actions” of Weiss’s office and the Justice Department, but “my concerns were ignored by senior leadership.”
Hunter Biden held a lucrative position on the board of Ukrainian energy giant Burisma when his father was vice president. He also pursued business deals in China and elsewhere during and after his father’s tenure, raking in millions thanks to these associations.
Records show Hunter Biden believed some of his Chinese business partners were connected to Chinese intelligence services and that he worried about the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) have demanded the Justice Department and FBI launch a full investigation into Hunter Biden’s laptop, including the revelation unearthed by the Washington Examiner that Joe Biden apparently unwittingly financed his son’s participation in an escort ring tied to Russia.
Whistleblower allegations emerged in July 2020 that FBI supervisory intelligence agent Brian Auten opened an assessment in August 2020, which was used by FBI headquarters to label accurate information about Hunter Biden as false, according to disclosures made public by Grassley. A whistleblower said Timothy Thibault, the now-former FBI assistant special agent in charge of the Washington Field Office, shut down a line of inquiry into Hunter Biden in October 2020 despite some of the details being known to be true at the time.
FBI Director Christopher Wray said he found these whistleblower allegations “deeply troubling.”
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Then-Attorney General William Barr rejected the idea of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden in December 2020 but said last year that Garland should have granted those powers to Weiss.
Senate Republicans have said Weiss must be given special counsel protections and authorities, and dozens of House Republicans called upon Garland to appoint a special counsel for the investigation.