Three House chairmen demanded on Wednesday that Hunter Biden’s attorneys provide them with private communications that recently surfaced in two media outlets, telling the attorneys they “believe it is highly likely” that Biden’s defense team leaked them to the outlets.
The chairmen, Reps. Jim Jordan (R-OH), James Comer (R-KY), and Jason Smith (R-MO), reasoned in a letter to the attorneys obtained by the Washington Examiner that because the communications were disclosed to the New York Times and Politico and subsequently “widely publicized,” the attorneys had no justification for withholding them.
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The attorneys also could not claim “any purported duty of confidentiality, work product, or other privilege interest” because the communications had been made available to media, the chairmen wrote.
The New York Times published a story on Aug. 19 centered on a plea deal between Biden and now-special counsel David Weiss that had unexpectedly fallen apart during a hearing in July.
The outlet noted its story was based in part on “over 200 pages of confidential correspondence between Mr. Weiss’s office and Mr. Biden’s legal team.”
Politico published a similar story that same day, citing “more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors.”
The communications showed, according to the New York Times, that Weiss had at one point this year “appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all.”
“But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring around the time a pair of IRS officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation,” the newspaper reported. “Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.”
The eventual plea deal, which the chairmen had criticized as a “sweetheart” arrangement, involved Biden pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and entering a pretrial diversion agreement to avoid a felony gun charge.
While both outlets referenced a high volume of content centered on the plea deal, they only published snippets from it.
The chairmen’s letter was directed to Chris Clark and Abbe Lowell. Clark had been leading Biden’s defense team but stepped down last month, citing the possibility of him needing to testify in a future trial about Biden’s failed plea deal. Lowell, who has represented prominent Democrats in the past, took over the case for Biden at the same time as Clark’s exit.
The chairmen asked that Clark and Lowell produce the documents in full by Sept. 20 and warned they “may seek testimony” from them or Biden on the leak should they not comply.
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“There are a limited number of people who would have had access to the documents and communications discussed in these articles, and based on the narrative set forth in these pieces, the Committees believe it is highly likely that these materials were provided to these media outlets by or at the direction of the Biden legal defense team,” the chairmen wrote.
Neither Lowell’s nor Weiss’s office responded to requests for comment.
Read the full letter below:
