Up to this point, the dynamic in the Republican House committees’ investigations and hearings looking into Hunter Biden, and potential wrongdoing by President Joe Biden and his family members has been between the committee chairs and the White House. That’s been mostly non answers or nonsensical shouting from Biden, when it’s not the usual garbage we get from the press secretary’s podium daily.
Here and there, the ball has bounced between a Committee and an individual state prosecutor (for example, there was new correspondence to Chairman Jim Jordan from Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, which my colleague Bonchie wrote about earlier on Saturday).
But on Friday, there was a different sort of volley, and it came forth blazing hot from the desk of Hunter Biden’s attorney. As first reported by Axios, Abbe Lowell’s full-throated attack makes several outrageous claims, in part meant to damage the credibility of the House Ways and Means Committee’s work. But he also personally attacked its chairman, Jason Smith, “accusing him of trying to undermine the law and feeding ‘the misinformation campaign to harm our client, Hunter Biden, as a vehicle to attack his father.'”
The letter goes on to slam Smith for releasing the screengrabs of the WhatsApp messages [emphasis original]:
The screen-grab images you posted are not real and contain myriad of issues….In short, the images you circulated online are complete fakes.
On that last point, it’s been confirmed that the messages came through “an electronic search warrant served on Apple,” as my colleague Jennifer Van Laar reported:
The authenticity of the Whats App message has been questioned, especially by one influential Democrat political consultant. However, Shapley says the message was produced in response to an electronic search warrant served on Apple.
After Lowell pushes that narrative on the messages, though, he tries to do something even more outrageous. He comes after the IRS whistleblowers, too–while throwing shade on “the timing of the agents’ leaks”:
What he’s saying: Lowell suggests the IRS agents interviewed may be claiming the title of whistleblower “in an attempt to evade their own misconduct” and clams that the “timing of the agents’ leaks and your subsequent decision to release their statements do not seem innocent.”
The director of communications for the House committee, J.P. Freire, responded to Lowell’s attacks, saying that “[i]t’s little surprise” that Hunter Biden’s legal team is “attempting to chill” the investigation and “discredit the whistleblowers”:
It’s little surprise that Hunter Biden’s attorneys are attempting to chill our investigation and discredit the whistleblowers who say they have already faced retaliation from the IRS and the Department of Justice despite statutory protections established by law.
As I covered Thursday, the three House Committees sent a joint letter to over a dozen federal employees for appointments to make “transcribed interviews” with the committees, including US attorneys, IRS, and DOJ figures. The fact that the attorney of Joe Biden’s son is peeved at the people’s representatives trying to untangle alleged wrongdoings by the most powerful man on Earth isn’t going to stop their important–and so far, revealing–investigation work.