House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan issued the 60th subpoena of the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden on Tuesday, demanding that a Delaware prosecutor notorious for allegedly covering for first son Hunter Biden testify before the committee.
Jordan subpoenaed Lesley Wolf, assistant U.S. attorney for Delaware, demanding that she testify on Dec. 7 at 10 a.m. in Washington, D.C., according to a copy of the subpoena reviewed by The Daily Signal.
Jordan explained in a letter to Wolf that the Judiciary Committee considers her testimony essential to its oversight of the “executive branch’s commitment to impartial justice” and to “whether sufficient grounds exist to draft articles of impeachment against President Biden.” The Justice Department under Biden twice refused to make Wolf available for a voluntary interview, leaving the committee “no choice but to compel your testimony at a deposition.”
While the Justice Department agreed to make some employees available, Wolf was not among them.
Republicans have accused Wolf of impeding the Delaware U.S. attorney’s investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged influence peddling. Republicans note that Hunter Biden handsomely benefitted from lucrative business deals in China, Ukraine, and elsewhere while his father, then the vice president to President Barack Obama, served as the administration’s point-man for those countries.
Democrats, meanwhile, have claimed that there is no evidence the president directly benefited from his son’s foreign business deals. President Biden has denied any wrongdoing on his part or on the part of his son.
“Witness testimony and public reporting indicates that as an assistant U.S. attorney for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, you were directly involved in that office’s investigation of Hunter Biden, which deviated from standard investigative procedures,” Jordan notes in the letter.
The letter cites whistleblower testimony, noting that Wolf “attended a substantial majority, if not all, of the prosecution team meetings concerning the [Justice] Department’s investigation of Hunter Biden.”
Jordan also accuses Wolf of breaking from “standard investigative protocol” in five ways, either “directly or by instructing others.” He claims that she told Hunter Biden’s lawyer about a potential search warrant for his abandoned storage unit and later objected to executing a warrant for the unit; that she prohibited investigators from asking witnesses about “the big guy” or “dad,” presumably referring to President Biden; that she ordered investigators to remove any reference to “Political Figure 1,” i.e. Biden, from a search warrant; that she prohibited investigators from following up on evidence of criminal campaign finance violations; and that she forbade investigators from interviewing Hunter Biden’s adult children.
Furthermore, Jordan cites witness testimony that Wolf obstructed the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Pennsylvania from briefing the Delaware office “about information from a highly credible confidential human source regarding bribes allegedly paid to President Biden and Hunter Biden.” The former U.S. Attorney for Western Pennsylvania testified that Wolf served as the “primary interface” for the Delaware office to receive information about Biden family bribery allegations, and that Wolf “constricted” the information sharing between the two offices.
“Given your central role in the [Justice] Department’s investigation of Hunter Biden, you are uniquely situated to advance not only the committee’s oversight and inform potential legislative reforms, … but also the committee’s impeachment inquiry,” Jordan notes.
The letter also rejects the Justice Department’s legal arguments against Congress’ authority to compel non-political appointees to testify in probes such as the impeachment inquiry.
“The Supreme Court has recognized that Congress has a ‘broad and indispensable’ power to conduct oversight, which ‘encompasses inquiries into the administration of existing laws, studies of proposed laws, and surveys in our social, economic or political system for the purpose of enabling Congress to remedy them,’” the letter notes.
It also cites Supreme Court precedent recognizing that “Congress may seek information from the Executive Branch about ‘corruption, maladministration or inefficiency in agencies of government.’ Here, whistleblowers have brought forward numerous allegations of corruption (e.g. preferential treatment for the president’s son), maladministration (e.g. retaliation against whistleblowers), and inefficiency (e.g. an investigation so bogged down by delays and micromanagement that the statute of limitations lapsed before prosecutors could file certain charges), all backed by contemporaneous documentary and testimonial evidence.”
After clerking for U.S. District Judge Anita Brody, a George H.W. Bush appointee in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, Wolf joined the corporate law firm Ropes & Gray. University of Iowa law professor Derek Muller found that 91% of the firm’s political donations went to Democrats between 2017 and 2020, making it the 39th most liberal of the country’s 100 largest law firms. She joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Delaware in 2006.
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