EXCLUSIVE — A top House Republican ripped the “double standard” in how the
Justice Department
is handling investigations tied to
Hunter Biden
and also dinged the DOJ’s credibility as it
nears a historic indictment
of former President
Donald Trump.
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH),
chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, cast doubt on the Biden DOJ’s ability to investigate Trump fairly when he spoke with the Washington Examiner on the sidelines of a Wednesday morning speech at BakerHostetler’s annual legislative seminar on Capitol Hill. Jordan argued Wednesday it was a “huge” double standard when looking at how
Attorney General Merrick Garland
is handling the Hunter Biden investigation, led by Delaware federal prosecutor David Weiss, and at how the DOJ is handling the special counsel investigation into
President Joe Biden’s
own alleged mishandling of classified information when both are compared to special counsel Jack Smith’s
criminal Mar-a-Lago inquiry.
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Smith’s investigation into Trump and his alleged mishandling of classified documents at
Mar-a-Lago
is
reportedly “wrapping up”
as the Justice Department moves toward an indictment of the former president.
FBI Director
Christopher Wray
has confirmed the existence of an FBI form alleging Biden engaged in a “criminal bribery scheme” with a yet-unnamed foreign national as vice president. Jordan sought Wednesday to contrast the FBI’s efforts to conceal the existence of the FD-1023 confidential human source form from GOP congressional investigators with the FBI’s reliance on British ex-spy Christopher Steele’s discredited dossier to pursue Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants involving Trump.
“How much you want to bet the source for the 1023 that the FBI won’t make public and Mr. Comer has seen? How much you want to bet that source is a little more credible than Christopher Steele? How much do you want to bet?” Jordan asked. “According to Mr. Comer, they’ve had that document for years. So to contrast, here they’ve had that document for years — we don’t know what they’ve done, they’re still investigating — but when it came to the Steele dossier, they used that document two days after they got it. I mean, that’s the part that just drives Americans crazy because they see this double standard.”
The president is
also being investigated
by another Garland-appointed special counsel, Robert Hur. Biden’s personal attorneys
said they first discovered classified documents in early November 2022
at the
Penn Biden Center
for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, located in the nation’s capital. Biden’s lawyers then found more classified documents at his Wilmington home in Delaware, and the DOJ
found more when it conducted its own search
.
“Who knows what’s happening,” Jordan said on Wednesday. “Nothing leaks out from Robert Hur’s special counsel, but everything leaks out about Jack Smith’s.”
Jordan had also pressed Garland in a
letter
on Friday about special counsel John Durham’s findings related to the faulty origin of the Trump-Russia investigation and the
“failings” of the FBI
.
The GOP chairman placed
Smith’s investigation
in the context of
Durham’s report,
arguing to Garland that “due to the FBI’s documented political bias, the Justice Department must ensure any ongoing investigations are not poisoned by this same politicization.” He pushed Garland on the FBI’s involvement in Smith’s sprawling investigation into the former president.
“They’ve been after this guy for eight years. It’s ridiculous. Just ridiculous,” Jordan said on Wednesday of the Biden DOJ investigations into Trump. “Read the Durham report [on] what they did in that investigation. They use the dossier two days after they got it they put it in a draft FISA application. Didn’t validate one single substantive allegation in the dossier. And yet they used it to go spy on the campaign — and then it just continues.”
Jordan
told
Garland on Tuesday that he wanted more information on what Smith has been up to since being appointed by Garland in November. He told Garland to hand over “an unredacted copy of the memorandum outlining the scope of Mr. Smith’s probes regarding President Trump and any supporting documentation related to his appointment as special counsel.”
Garland’s
appointment order
for Smith said the special counsel “is authorized to conduct the ongoing investigation” into the Capitol riot, and Smith was “further authorized to conduct the ongoing investigation” related to the FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago.
Garland insisted Smith will make an “independent” decision
on bringing charges, but Garland has the power to reject such a move.
When asked on Wednesday about whether he would hold Smith or Garland responsible for a Trump indictment, Jordan demurred somewhat.
“We want that memorandum. We’ll see if we get it,” Jordan said. “When you’re getting ready to indict a former president who is leading in every single poll in the 2024 race, that’s totally unprecedented territory. So we think it makes sense to let the American people know exactly what the perimeters of the investigation are.”
Jordan also criticized Smith on Wednesday for inserting the DOJ into what would become
the Lois Lerner IRS scandal
targeting conservative nonprofit groups during the Obama years, which Trump has criticized Smith for since he became special counsel.
Lerner, director of the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit, led an IRS effort targeting Tea Party groups and similar conservative nonprofit organizations. Smith’s push for DOJ officials to contact Lerner and the IRS in order to get the DOJ involved seemed to be the impetus behind the IRS sending the FBI reams of nonprofit tax records.
“Jack Smith was trying to prosecute people — back during the Lois Lerner [scandal], he was looking for ways to prosecute the very people who had been harassed and targeted by the IRS,” Jordan said on Wednesday when asked if he trusted Smith to administer justice fairly. “So no, I don’t have a lot of confidence in him.”
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Despite all of this, Jordan predicted during his Wednesday speech that Trump would win the GOP nomination and the general election.
“We’re gonna have a primary. I think he’s gonna win,” Jordan said. “I think he’s gonna be our next president. And I think that’s good for the country.”
Emily Jacobs contributed to this report.
Read the full article here
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