Hunter Biden prosecutor paused investigation before election: report
The top federal prosecutor in Delaware decided to pause a criminal investigation of Hunter Biden months before the 2020 election to prevent the public from learning about it, according to a report.
US Attorney David Weiss, appointed by former President Donald Trump, decided not to seek search warrants or issue grand jury subpoenas so as not to “alert the public to the existence of the case in the middle of a presidential election,” Politico reports.
The prosecutor’s office reportedly was torn over whether to continue its probe or pause it due to the election, and Weiss, who remains in his job leading the case, sided with those who wanted to wait.
“To his credit, he listened,” an unnamed source told the publication.
The Justice Department’s role in the case has faced criticism from Trump allies, who note that a Delaware computer repairman gave the FBI a laptop formerly belonging to Hunter Biden in December 2019, according to records first reported by The Post.
In the final months of the 2020 presidential race, The Post revealed a trove of emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop that appeared to link his then-candidate father to his foreign business ventures in China and with Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
The emails revealed that the younger Biden introduced a top Burisma executive to his father, then vice president, less than a year before the elder Biden admittedly pressured Ukrainian officials into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.
The water-damaged MacBook Pro — which bore a sticker from the Beau Biden Foundation — was dropped off for repair at a Delaware computer shop in April 2019, but the individual who dropped it off never returned to pick it up.
It was seized by the FBI in December of that year.
In addition to his Ukrainian connections, other emails on the computer showed Hunter discussing potential business deals with China’s largest private energy company.
One deal seemed to draw considerable attention from the younger Biden, who called it “interesting for me and my family.”
Senate Republicans revealed the findings of their investigation into Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings in September. They said the Obama administration ignored “glaring warning signs” when the then-vice president’s son joined the board of Burisma when he had no energy experience.
Hunter Biden’s position with the reportedly corrupt energy company — which paid him “as much as $50,000 per month” — “created an immediate potential conflict of interest” because his father was involved in US policy toward Ukraine, the report stated.
Both President Biden and his son have continued to deny any wrongdoing.
Immediately following the release of The Post’s exposé, Twitter locked The Post’s account and demanded the outlet delete six tweets that linked to the stories based on files from the abandoned laptop in order to regain account access.
Twitter finally caved and unlocked the account after a two-week stalemate in the waning days of the election, without The Post deleting any of the tweets in question.
During that time, The Post gained about 190,000 Twitter followers.
At a Senate hearing weeks after The Post’s return to the site, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey conceded that the company made “a mistake” in its actions.
“We recognize it as a mistake that we made, both in terms of the intention of the policy and also the enforcement action of not allowing people to share it publicly or privately,” said Dorsey, responding to a question from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) about the forced media blackout.
In the wake of The Post’s reporting, Biden’s campaign and other Democrats tried to claim the documents were “Russian disinformation.”
The younger Biden’s former business partner, however, came forward to corroborate the information and offer additional documentation that bolstered the story.
After his father was elected, Hunter Biden confirmed in December that he’s under federal investigation. He said the authorities are looking at potential tax crimes.
He also revealed that the laptop could “certainly” belong to him, saying in an April sitdown with CBS’s “Sunday Morning,” that he could not say for sure because he was addicted to crack at the time.
“I really don’t know what the answer is, that’s the truthful answer,” he told the network before adding, “I have no idea.”
But asked whether it could have belonged to him, he replied, “Certainly.”
“Certainly, there could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me. It could be that I was hacked, it could be that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me,” he continued.
The Justice Department has come under fire for its handling of other election-year cases.
In 2016, Republicans were outraged when the FBI decided not to pursue charges against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for mishandling classified information on a private home server.
But Democrats cried foul when then-FBI Director James Comey reopened that case just before the election.
