The House Judiciary Committee filed a lawsuit Thursday against two lawyers in the Justice Department’s tax division for failing to respond to subpoenas issued by the Republican-led committee co-leading President Biden’s impeachment inquiry.
of complaint Preliminary injunction forcing U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to give testimony to Justice Department attorneys Mark Daly and Jack Morgan before a committee investigating the 81-year-old president’s alleged involvement in family business affairs. He asked for an order.
Mr. Daley and Mr. Morgan are involved in the Justice Department’s five-year investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged criminal conduct, and have so far filed 12 charges against his eldest son, 53, related to tax and gun crimes. bringing about indictments.
“The committee urgently needs the testimony of Mr. Daly and Mr. Morgan.” Motion for emergency orders state. “Their daily defiance of the committee’s subpoenas delays and impedes the investigation just as the committee is finishing up its fact-gathering efforts.”
IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler told lawmakers last year that Morgan and Daley were working with David Weiss, now a special prosecutor, IRS criminal investigators, and the F.B.I. He said he attended a June 2022 meeting with officials in which the Justice Department’s tax division recommended that Hunter Biden not be prosecuted.
Shapley also testified Morgan “wanted to remove Hunter Biden’s name from the electronic search warrant” in the case, which “seemed unethical” to the IRS investigators.
“Jack Morgan said we could probably do ‘most’ of the data we were looking for without naming Hunter Biden,” Shapley told the House Ways and Means Committee. he said. “I have never participated in a study where just getting the bulk of the data was considered sufficient.”
According to the complaint, the Justice Department “obstructed” the House committee’s efforts to obtain testimony from tax officials.
“Initially, the Department of Justice refused to make Mr. Daley and Mr. Morgan available for voluntary interviews with the committee, forcing the committee to twice subpoena their depositions. “They ignored the subpoenas because they chose to comply with the Department of Justice’s baseless and illegal instructions not to appear in court,” the court filing states.
“They deferred to the Justice Department’s argument that the subpoena was invalid because House rules precluded agency attorneys (lawyers representing the interests of the executive branch, not those of Daley or Morgan) from appearing,” the lawsuit states. continues. “Among other things, the Department of Justice argues that the failure of agency lawyers to appear appears to impede the President’s ability to control the disclosure of potentially privileged information.”
The impeachment inquiry also examines whether the president pressured the Justice Department to downplay the investigation into his son, which House investigators believe Morgan and Daley can shed light on, according to the filing.
Other Justice Department officials who participated in the impeachment inquiry testified that there was no political influence in the Hunter Biden case.
