Those are four words that no lawyer wants to hear from a judge in a hearing. But that was not the least of it for Justice Department lawyers fighting House subpoenas into the Biden corruption scandal.
U.S. District Court Judge Ana Reyes slammed the DOJ for stonewalling Congress on the subpoenas while imprisoning figures like former Trump adviser Peter Navarro for doing the same thing.
The Biden Administration has blocked the testimony of prosecutors Mark Daly and Jack Morgan, who were involved in an inexplicable decision of the Justice Department to allow major felonies against Hunter Biden to lapse.
In prior hearings, IRS whistleblowers testified that they had an agreement on the table to extend the statute of limitations on the crimes, but Special Counsel David Weiss allowed the period to lapse without any explanation. Since the DOJ was in the midst of a plea negotiations, it made no sense that the DOJ would simply kill potential charges.
The handling of the Hunter Biden investigation has been widely criticized as affording special treatment to the President’s son, including scuttling searches of Biden property and giving Hunter a heads up before attempts to interview him.
Ultimately, the DOJ cut a plea bargain with Hunter that many of us rejected as laughable. It not only failed to charge the full array of still viable criminal allegations (including being an unregistered foreign agent), but included an absurd immunity agreement that would bar future charges.
The plea agreement fell apart in open court after the judge asked the lead prosecutor a simple question of whether in his long career he had ever seen such an immunity deal. He answered no.
Yet even after that meltdown, the DOJ admits that it tried to restore most of the agreement, but Hunter Biden’s team was insistent that the original deal remained enforceable — a position repeatedly rejected by later courts.
The DOJ was in a bizarre position. Its effort to give Hunter a sweetheart deal — or at least most of the original deal — could not occur because the beneficiary wanted it all. It had little choice but to charge him with the tax and gun crimes.
The House is in the midst of an impeachment inquiry that includes allegations of influence over the Hunter investigation. While insisting that there was no pressure or special dealing in the matter, the DOJ has blocked key sources of evidence.
That led to the House subpoenas.
I also have previously written on the sharp contrast between the Hunter Biden charges and those against Sen. Menendez despite the underlying similarities.
The only way for the House to investigate such corrupt special dealings is to interview the principle actors, including these two attorneys. Otherwise, as Democratic members have done, critics can insist that they have no direct evidence of wrongdoing.
It appears that confusion expressed by many of us is shared by Judge Reyes.
Judge Reyes noted the obvious: “There’s a person in jail right now because you all brought a criminal lawsuit against him because he did not appear for a House subpoena.” The DOJ demanded six months in prison. Navarro is now serving a four-month sentence.
Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon also received a four-month sentence.
Reyes noted that “I think it’s quite rich you guys pursue criminal investigations and put people in jail for not showing up . . . And now you guys are flouting those subpoenas. . . . And you don’t have to show up?”
Reyes noted that the DOJ lawyers were “making a bunch of arguments that you would never accept from any other litigant . . . I imagine that there are hundreds, if not thousands of defense attorneys . . . who would be happy to hear that DOJ’s position is, if you don’t agree with a subpoena, if you believe it’s unconstitutional or unlawful, you can unilaterally not show up.”
The Justice Department insisted that it is different when its own prosecutors refuse to testify and noted that the House had also refused to a demand to have other Justice Department lawyers present for the depositions. They then stressed that the decision to defy the subpoena came after lengthy deliberations “at a high level.”
Reyes then asked if the DOJ would drop its opposition if it were allowed to have DOJ lawyers in the room for the questioning. When the lawyers said that they could not answer that question at this time, Reyes exclaimed, “Are you kidding me?”
The answer is that they really are not kidding about any of this stuff. The Justice Department continues to act with utter impunity in these cases. It abandoned consistency years ago with any semblance of restraint.
Jonathan Turley is an attorney and professor at George Washington University Law School.