Judiciary Republicans sue DOJ to force testimony in Biden probe

Amid ongoing congressional probes of Biden family business dealings, Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have initiated legal action against the Department of Justice to compel the testimony of two lawyers who spent time investigating Hunter Biden, as The Hill reports.

According to the outlet, panel Republicans had already issued subpoenas to the pair as well as to other agency officials, but their testimony did not materialize.

As the New York Post explains, the Judiciary Committee's complaint requests that a federal court in Washington, D.C. issue an injunction requiring deposition appearances from attorneys Mark Daly and Jack Morgan.

Both lawyers have been involved in the years-long investigation of Hunter Biden's business and financial activities, a probe that has yielded 12 criminal charges in total.

As a press release from the Judiciary Committee explained, the lawyers at issue, both of whom are employees of the DOJ Tax Division, “were present at a meeting at DOJ headquarters in June 2022 about prosecution decisions related to [Hunter] Biden.”

IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley, who also attended the aforementioned meeting, has told Congress that the Tax Division at the DOJ stood in opposition to leveling charges against the first son.

Testifying before the House Ways and Means Committee, Shapley noted that Morgan “wanted to remove Hunter Biden's name from electronic search warrants,” something that struck him as ethically questionable.

“Jack Morgan said, doing it without Hunter Biden's name would probably still get us, in quote, 'most' of the data we sought,” Shapley added.

The whistleblower went on, “I have never been part of an investigation where only getting most of the data was considered sufficient.”

To date, the DOJ has resisted allowing the lawyers to participate in depositions, citing a series of justifications that include a policy disallowing line-level staffers from providing testimony about open matters.

Committee attorneys have, in response, cited the ongoing impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden as the reason for their suit to compel testimony, stating that one of the purposes of that probe is to assess whether Hunter Biden was afforded favorable treatment by the DOJ.

The inquiry is also meant to review whether President Biden exerted pressure on the Justice Department to tread lightly with regard to his son.

Believing that the two attorneys at issue have relevant information on those topics, panel attorneys said, “The Committee's need for Daly's and Morgan's testimony is urgent.

“Every day that they defy the Committee's subpoenas delays and hinders its investigation at a time when the Committee is seeking to conclude its fact gathering,” they went on, but whether this lawsuit will produce the panel's desired outcome, only time will tell.