Former special counsel David Weiss got little support from the Department of Justice (DOJ) when he sought lawyers to help prosecute President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, Weiss told Congress during a recent closed-door interview.
Amid delicate plea deal negotiations between Hunter Biden and Weiss in 2023, Weiss said he asked the DOJ deputy attorney general’s office for a team of trial lawyers and received a single resume, according to a transcript of the interview reviewed by Fox News Digital.
‘Actually, as I think about the sequencing, I had started to reach out myself directly to offices or people that I knew and make my own inquiries,’ Weiss told House Judiciary Committee staff of his struggle to hire lawyers for the sensitive job of trying the president’s son.
Weiss appeared on Capitol Hill for the interview in June as part of the committee’s inquiry into the DOJ’s years-long investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden.
Now no longer a DOJ employee, Weiss spoke candidly for hours with the committee, shedding new light on his interactions with the Biden DOJ and giving fresh insight into why Hunter Biden was never charged with certain violations.
Who is David Weiss?
Weiss was appointed U.S. attorney of Delaware during the first Trump administration and began investigating Hunter Biden at that time. Former Attorney General Merrick Garland made Weiss special counsel in August 2023 after a plea agreement with Hunter Biden fell apart.
Republicans had accused Weiss of offering Hunter Biden a ‘sweetheart’ plea deal that involved only misdemeanors. But in an unusual move, a judge rejected the deal, leading Weiss to instead bring two successful indictments against the then-first son, one for illegal gun possession and another for nine tax charges, including three felonies.
Weiss came under enormous scrutiny by Republicans and Democrats for his handling of the investigation, which had become a hyper-political national news story centered on the salacious behavior and wrongdoings of Hunter Biden, a recovering drug and alcohol addict, and allegations that Joe Biden was complicit in his son’s crimes.
Republicans claimed Weiss was not tough enough on Hunter Biden, while Democrats said he was being treated more harshly than a typical defendant because he was the president’s son. Joe Biden ultimately granted an unconditional pardon to his son, a move widely criticized by members of both parties.
Weiss gets ‘one resume’
Weiss said during the interview that he was ‘fortunate enough to obtain a couple very excellent prosecutors,’ a reference to the two DOJ attorneys who handled trial preparations for Hunter Biden.
But, Weiss also indicated that when he first requested lawyers in the spring of 2023, he had to be self-sufficient in finding them and that the deputy attorney general’s office was unhelpful. Weiss noted he did not deal directly with former Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco at all and assumed she was recused from Hunter Biden’s cases.
Weiss said that at one point he ran into the director of the Executive Office for United States Attorneys, which handles recruitment, at an event and asked if any hiring progress had been made.
Weiss did not ‘have a whole lot of success’ during that conversation, he said.
‘What do you mean, you didn’t have success? … They didn’t give you lawyers?’ a committee aide asked.
‘I got one resume,’ Weiss replied.
The aide asked, ‘Nobody wanted to come prosecute Hunter Biden?’
‘I don’t want to say that because I don’t know that they weren’t trying to find people,’ Weiss said. ‘All I know was I didn’t get a whole lot of resumes.’
Weiss eventually gained two attorneys, Leo Wise and Derek Hines, who went on to secure a conviction by a jury in Delaware after a week-long trial on gun possession charges and a guilty plea to all nine of Hunter Biden’s tax charges.
A committee aide pressed Weiss on why he felt there was ‘such a drought’ of help at DOJ headquarters.
‘As I said a moment ago … I did not receive a lot of resumes in response to my initial request,’ Weiss said, noting that eventually the DOJ’s Public Integrity Section assisted him.
Asked if the Public Integrity Section helped him because Weiss proactively reached out, Weiss replied, ‘Probably.’
Burisma tax years and FARA
For his testimony, the Trump DOJ gave Weiss permission in a letter to talk to Congress about Hunter Biden’s cases. The department noted, however, that it could not authorize Weiss to talk about the former first son’s confidential tax information.
Weiss suggested, though, that he would have charged Hunter Biden for the 2014 and 2015 tax years if he could have.
‘To the extent I can put together — and this is general — a case that involves more years than not and allows me to more fully develop allegations about a course of conduct and a scheme, that’s better for the prosecution,’ Weiss said. ‘So it’s not like I’m looking to cut out years generally when you’re pursuing a tax investigation.’
During the years in question, Hunter Biden was raking in $1 million per year as a board member of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma while his father, then vice president, was overseeing foreign policy with Ukraine. The scenario became ripe for questions about conflicts of interest, in part because of suspicious interactions between Hunter Biden and the Obama State Department.
In Weiss’s final special counsel report, he dodged explaining why he brought charges of failure to pay taxes and tax evasion against Hunter Biden only for the tax years after 2015, citing Joe Biden’s pardon. Now, Weiss said, he would be more willing to talk about it if he were legally allowed to do so.
Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, pressed Weiss, saying the ‘political aspects of Burisma’ raised ‘glaring’ questions about the prosecutorial decisions made for the years for which Hunter Biden avoided charges.
‘I understand,’ Weiss replied. ‘Absolutely. Yes. And I wish that I could address it. But it’s my understanding that, for me to trip into 2014 and ’15 is a violation of [U.S. code].’
Weiss also told the committee his team had no serious discussions about charging Hunter Biden under a foreign lobby law called the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
‘We just couldn’t put together a sufficient case,’ Weiss said.