🎙️ Voice is AI-generated. Inconsistencies may occur.
An FBI supervisory special agent told congressional investigators that the Secret Service was tipped off about a planned interview of Hunter Biden shortly after his father's election victory, according to a newly released transcript detailing the unknown agent's testimony.
On Friday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland named U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware as special counsel in the ongoing federal investigation into Hunter Biden. Republican-led House committees have been steadfast in findings any links of potential criminality committed by the president's son, the president himself or others in their orbit. Weiss, who was appointed by Donald Trump in 2017 and later retained by the Biden administration, has overseen a federal investigation of Hunter Biden since 2018.
Weiss requested to be made special counsel last Tuesday, according to Garland, following a plea agreement between Hunter Biden's lawyers and prosecutors that went awry in a Delaware courtroom last month due to a disagreement about provisions within the agreement in relation to Hunter's charges involving the failure to pay federal income taxes and illegally possessing a firearm.
The FBI agent, who spoke to investigators on July 17, said that Secret Service protection was assigned to Hunter Biden on or around our December 3, 2020. A plan was reportedly developed, in which the FBI Los Angeles special agent in charge was to reach out to the Secret Service at 8 a.m. on December 8 to interview the president's son as part of an official investigation.
"However, the night before, December 7 of 2020, I was informed that FBI headquarters had notified Secret Service headquarters and the transition team about the planned actions the following day," the agent testified. "This essentially tipped off a group of people very close to President Biden and Hunter Biden and gave this group an opportunity to obstruct the approach of the witness."
When asked to elaborate, the agent stated that he or she was informed that FBI headquarters had contacted Secret Service headquarters and "had made a notification at that time, or somewhere around that time, on the evening of [December] 7."
It made him upset, he added.
"I felt it was people that did not need to know about our intent," said the agent. "I believe that the Secret Service had to be notified for our safety, for lack of confusion, for deconfliction, which we would do in so many other cases, but I didn't understand why the initial notification."
On the following day, the agent and a partner in the IRS were told to not go near Hunter Biden's residence and to stand by and wait for confirmation to get near the home and the subject.
The agent said that was the first instance in about 20 years of working at the FBI that such a situation occurred, in which the subject of an investigation allegedly dictated how and when an interview would occur.
A spokesperson for the FBI declined to comment to Newsweek.
The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability said Monday that the testimony corroborates claims made by IRS agent-turned-whistleblower Gary Shapley, who said on CBS' 60 Minutes in June that officials were blocked from taking "certain investigative steps" that "that could have led us to President Biden."
Shapley and Joe Ziegler, a second IRS whistleblower who was publicly identified for the first time during a July hearing before the House Judiciary Committee in July, made similar claims about purported interference in the government's investigation.
Ziegler and Shapley also encouraged the appointment of a special counsel, with Ziegler calling it "necessary."
"IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley's testimony that Secret Service headquarters and the Biden transition team were tipped off is confirmed by a former FBI agent," House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican from Kentucky, said in a statement. "Shapley and the FBI agent planned to interview Hunter Biden in December 2020, but learned the night before that the Biden transition team was tipped off."
Comer, like numerous other Republicans in the wake of Garland appointing Weiss as special counsel, expressed his disagreement with the decision and Weiss overlooking the remainder of this ongoing investigation.
"The Oversight Committee has no confidence in U.S. Attorney Weiss as Special Counsel given his inability to prevent the Biden transition team from being contacted and federal agents were not permitted to interview Hunter Biden as planned," Comer said. "Under the Weiss-led investigation, investigators were prevented from taking steps that could have led to Joe Biden, the statute of limitations was allowed to run with respect to certain felonies, and the U.S. Attorney's office sought to give Hunter Biden an unprecedented sweetheart plea deal."
Newsweek reached out via email to Comer for further comment.
Attorney and legal scholar Jonathan Turley told Newsweek via email on Monday that the more that respected, career investigators come forward, it is "going to be harder and harder for Democrats to continue attacking witnesses."
"It is also becoming increasingly difficult to claim that Hunter was treated like anyone else," Turley said. "What these investigators are describing is a fixed investigation where questions are barred, searched compromised, and interviews obstructed.
"The concerns are magnified when you consider that, after all of these irregularities and interventions, the Justice Department [DOJ] cut a laughable plea bargain that collapsed after only a few questions from the court."
He said Democrats' demands on "an immediate cessation of any investigation into the Biden corruption scandal" is also questionable.
Democrat Jamie Raskin, the ranking member on the House Oversight Committee, told ABC News on Sunday that everyone clearly sees that Hunter Biden "was addicted to drugs and did a lot of really unlawful and wrong things," but asked for patience while the investigation is conducted.
Democrat Daniel Goldman, another committee member, said something similar on Sunday to CNN's Jake Tapper on State of the Union.
"If Hunter Biden has committed crimes, he should be charged with them," Goldman said. "I'm a Democrat saying that. You don't hear any currently elected Republicans saying that if Trump committed crimes he should be charged with them and held accountable. That's a critical distinction."
Raskin issued a statement Monday criticizing the Republicans' release of the month-old transcript, saying it was politically motivated.
"The chairman's release, obviously timed to distract from news of an imminent potential fourth criminal indictment of Donald Trump, features the same selective and distorted parsing of information we have come to expect in service of the Republicans' fruitless investigation into President Biden, which has failed to turn up a single shred of evidence of wrongdoing," Raskin said.
Newsweek reached out to the Secret Service via text for comment.
Update 08/14/23, 4:20 p.m. ET: This story was updated with comment from the FBI.
About the writer
Nick Mordowanec is a Newsweek investigative reporter based in Michigan. His focus includes U.S. and international politics and policies, immigration, ... Read more