A judge appointed by President Biden on Friday allowed lawyers involved in the Biden family investigation to ignore subpoenas, even though former Trump adviser Peter Navarro is in prison for doing the same thing. denounced the apparent hypocrisy of the Department of Justice.
District Judge Ana Reyes criticizes the Justice Department in a status conference for not allowing Justice Department lawyers Mark Daley and Jack Morgan to testify as part of the House Judiciary Committee’s investigation of the Biden family and impeachment of the president. did.
According to Politico, Reyes said during a Judiciary Committee hearing on the case: “There’s a guy who’s currently in prison, and you’ve filed a criminal case against him because he didn’t show up to a subpoena from the House of Representatives. Because of this,” he said, apparently referring to Navarro.
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Former U.S. President Donald Trump’s White House trade adviser Peter Navarro speaks with reporters as he arrives at Country Mall Plaza before reporting to a federal correctional facility in Miami, Florida, March 19, 2024. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)
Navarro was indicted and convicted of contempt of Congress in March for failing to respond to Congressional subpoenas requesting testimony and documents related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He was sentenced to prison. Navarro said he could not cooperate with the commission investigating the January 6 attack because Trump had invoked executive privilege, an argument rejected by a lower court.
Former White House adviser Steve Bannon was sentenced to four months in prison for a similar contempt of Congress, but was granted release pending appeal.
“I think it’s pretty rich for you to pursue criminal investigations and put people in prison who don’t turn themselves in,” he said, but he would instruct current members of the executive branch to take the same approach. He was furious. “You all make a lot of arguments that would never be accepted by other litigants.”
The seal of the U.S. Department of Justice on the podium in Washington, D.C. (Samuel Corum/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“And now you’re ignoring the subpoenas… so you don’t have to turn yourself in?” Reyes continued.
She said the Justice Department’s position will please defense attorneys across the country.
“Defense attorneys will be pleased to hear the Department of Justice’s position that they can unilaterally disagree with a subpoena if they do not agree with it or believe that the subpoena is unconstitutional or illegal. I imagine there are hundreds, maybe even thousands of people. Show up,” Reyes said.
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According to Courthouse News Service, Daly and Morgan, attorneys in the Justice Department’s tax division, were subpoenaed because they had “direct knowledge of misconduct in a Justice Department investigation that appeared to benefit Hunter Biden.” I received it.
The committee said the pair recommended charges against Hunter Biden for alleged tax crimes in 2014 and 2015, when he served on the board of Ukrainian company Burisma. He was a member of the team.
The team initially agreed that Hunter Biden should be indicted, but then reversed course and suggested he should not be prosecuted.
After the reversal, the Justice Department allowed the statute of limitations on these charges to expire. The committee maintains that examining this timeline is critical to the investigation.
President Donald Trump’s former adviser Steve Bannon addressed the media on November 15, 2021, after appearing in court for contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc, via Getty Images)
Justice Department attorney James Gilligan tried to argue that the decision to fight the subpoena came after lengthy deliberations at a “high level.”
He also argued that Mr. Daly and Mr. Morgan are current government employees, while Mr. Navarro and Mr. Bannon were no longer members of the government at the time they were called to testify, a line of reasoning that Mr. Reyes was impressed with. He didn’t seem to care.
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But not all of her criticism was directed at Biden’s Justice Department.
Reyes scoffed at the Trump-era Office of General Counsel’s opinion that executive branch officials could not respond to subpoenas unless a Justice Department lawyer was allowed to be present.
She was also surprised that Mr. Gilligan would not commit to instructing Mr. Daley and Mr. Morgan to testify if the committee dropped its insistence that government legal counsel not be present in the deposition room.
“I can’t answer that right now,” he said. To this, Reyes replied, “Are you kidding me?”
FOX News’ Anders Hagström contributed to this report.
Former US President Donald Trump speaks outside a courtroom in New York on March 25, 2024. (Brendan McDiarmid/Reuters/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
