Justice Department Appears To Back Off From Effort To Jail Key Hunter Biden Witness Before House Testimony After Republican Claim of Obstruction

Updated at 9:25 A.M. E.D.TThe Department of Justice is backing off, at least for the moment, from what Republicans say was an attempt to “obstruct justice” by jailing an associate of Hunter Biden before he was scheduled to testify before the House Oversight Committee.The DOJ had appeared to demand that Devon Archer, a key witness in the GOP’s ongoing investigation of the president’s son Hunter be sent to jail as soon as possible, according to a letter sent to a judge overseeing the witness’s case over the weekend.The DOJ letter was sent two days before Archer’s scheduled testimony behind closed doors to the House Oversight Committee. Republicans on the committee immediately cried foul about the letter and described it as “odd” that such a letter was sent on a Saturday, outside of normal business hours at the Department of Justice.Following the furor over Saturday’s letter, the Justice Department sent another letter to the judge Sunday evening requesting that Archer’s surrender to the Bureau of Prisons be set for a date after his congressional testimony. “To be clear, the Government does not request (and has never requested) that the defendant surrender before his Congressional testimony,” the Sunday letter stated.Appearing on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, the Oversight committee’s chairman, James Comer, told host Maria Bartiromo that the letter could be construed as an attempt to intimidate his witness.“I don’t know if this is a coincidence or if this is another example of the weaponization of the Department of Justice, but I can tell you this — the lengths to which the Biden legal team has gone to try and intimidate our witnesses, to coordinate with the Department of Justice and certainly coordinate with the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, to encourage people to not cooperate with our investigation, to encourage banks not to turn over bank records, to encourage Treasury not to let us have access to those suspicious activity reports are very troubling and I believe that this is another violation of the law,” Mr. Comer said. “This is obstruction of justice.”The Saturday letter relates to a 2018 conviction on two felony counts for attempting to defraud a Native American tribe in a $60 million bond deal. Archer, a longtime business partner of Hunter Biden, was sentenced in 2022, but his incarceration of up to one-year in prison has been delayed because of appeals.Saturday, an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, Negar Tekeei, wrote to the judge handling Archer’s case, Ronnie Abrams, asking her to set a date for him to report to prison. Days earlier, an appeals court finalized an order upholding his sentence. Archer’s lawyers argued following the appeals court decision that their client was considering further appeals and that serving the sentence would be premature.In a statement to Politico, one of Mr. Archer’s attorneys, Matthew Schwartz, said his client would appear to testify before the oversight committee Monday as scheduled and that his client rejected the idea that the timing of the justice department’s letter was suspicious.“We are aware of speculation that the Department of Justice’s weekend request to have Mr. Archer report to prison is an attempt by the Biden administration to intimidate him in advance of his meeting with the House Oversight Committee,” Mr. Schwartz said. “To be clear, Mr. Archer does not agree with that speculation. In any case, Mr. Archer will do what he has planned to do all along, which is to show up on Monday and to honestly answer the questions that are put to him by the Congressional investigators.”Archer is expected to testify Monday that, despite President Biden’s assertions, the then-vice president Biden was aware of his son’s business deals — including those with a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma — and regularly participated in meetings with Hunter Biden’s clients, often on speakerphone. Both Mr. Biden and his son have rejected any notion that they were involved in anything inappropriate.

Justice Department Appears To Back Off From Effort To Jail Key Hunter Biden Witness Before House Testimony After Republican Claim of Obstruction

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