Ranking Member Jamie Raskin’s Statement on Judiciary Republicans’ Peddling of Expired Conspiracy Theories on David Weiss’s Investigation of Hunter Biden
Washington, D.C. (July 22, 2025)—Today, Rep. Jamie Raskin, Ranking Member of the House Judiciary Committee, issued the following statement on Judiciary Republicans’ fruitless fixation on peddling conspiracy theories regarding former Special Counsel David Weiss’s investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden during the Biden Administration:
“Leftovers and reruns again? House Republicans have long failed to uncover evidence of any wrongdoing by the Biden Administration in David Weiss’s successful investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden, but they keep trying. Now they’re serving up stale old claims of impropriety, grasping desperately for something—anything—to distract the American people from the flailing Trump Administration and its outrageous refusal to release the Epstein files that they used to treat as the Ark of the Covenant.
“After round two of testimony in this hopeless fishing expedition with Special Counsel David Weiss, Republicans are once again heading home with no fish, reduced to their comically petty grievance that DOJ didn’t find more attorneys willing to detail to Mr. Weiss’s office quickly enough. This laughable complaint has been debunked by Mr. Weiss—himself a Republican appointee, hand-picked by then Attorney General Barr to lead the Hunter Biden investigation—who has repeatedly affirmed that the Biden Administration provided him all the resources he requested and needed.
“Republicans have hauled in witness after witness who have only made the whole probe look ridiculous, reiterating that there was no political bias or special treatment in the investigation and prosecution of Hunter Biden. And yet these legislative masochists keep at it.
“Six months into the 119th Congress, Judiciary Republicans have yet to conduct any oversight of the current Administration, instead squandering their authority on a series of political wild goose chases and blundering fools’ errands. Our colleagues are trying to distract us from the spiraling chaos and deepening crisis of the Trump presidency.
“It’s 2025—why are we watching terrible Hunter Biden reruns? It’s long past time to move on and start a new season.”
Key Points from Weiss’s Deposition:
- Mr. Weiss stated over and over again—dozens of times during his two interviews—that he had full authority to make decisions in the case.
“But my view is I had the authority to make the decisions during the course of the investigation and the charging decisions with respect to Hunter Biden. I said so then. I continue to maintain that today.”
Q Okay. And what was Mr. Weinsheimer's directive to you on this case?
A In what respect?
Q In terms of charging authority.
A That I had the authority to make the decisions during the course of the case.
Q Okay. When you testified in November 2023, you said that you understood that even before you requested and obtained special counsel status in August of 2023, you believed that you had authority to bring charges in any appropriate jurisdiction. Is it still accurate that you believed you had ‑‑ that you would be able to bring charges in any appropriate jurisdiction?
A I believe, as Attorney General ‑‑ I'm sorry. As special counsel, I clearly had authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction. And as U.S. Attorney, before I was appointed special counsel, I was not concerned with whether I would have the authority to bring an action, whether it be in California, Washington D.C., or Delaware.
Q And you say you weren't concerned because if you had requested, for example, Section 515 authority, you were confident it would be granted to you.
A That is correct.
- Mr. Weiss testified—again—that no one at DOJ tried to interfere with the case or block him from bringing the cases or filing charges as he saw fit.
Q Okay. When you testified in November of 2023, you said, again, by our count, at least 25 times that nobody at DOJ ever blocked you from taking any action you deemed appropriate in the Hunter Biden investigation. Was that an accurate statement when you made it?
A It was.
Q And does it remain accurate today?
A Yes.
Q And just to walk through some of the individuals and entities with whom you engaged, is it accurate that nobody in the Tax Division of DOJ ever blocked you from taking any action that you deemed appropriate?
A They did not.
Q Is it accurate that nobody in the Office of the Deputy Attorney General ever blocked you from taking any action you deemed appropriate?
A That's correct.
Q Is it accurate that Bradley Weinsheimer never blocked you from taking any action that you deemed appropriate?
A Never.
Q Is it accurate that John Carlin never blocked you from taking any action you deemed appropriate?
A He did not.
Q Is it accurate that Lisa Monaco never blocked you from taking any action you deemed appropriate?
A No. I never had any conversation with Ms. Monaco.
Q And I believe you said that it's your understanding that she was recused from this case.
A That was my understanding.
Q Okay. Is it accurate that Merrick ‑‑ that the Attorney General, Merrick Garland, never blocked you from taking any action that you deemed appropriate in this case?
A He did not.
Q Is it accurate that the U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Columbia never blocked you from taking any action in this case?
A They did not.
- Mr. Weiss testified—again—that there was no political interference or partisan consideration in this case, and that he and others on the team made investigative and prosecutorial decisions according to facts and the law.
Q Okay. When you testified in November of 2023, you were asked about allegations that you and/or the prosecutors working on this matter at your direction may have been influenced by political considerations when they were making ‑‑ or you were making investigative and prosecutorial decisions in this matter. And you said ‑‑ and this is a quote from your transcript at page 71. We have it if you'd like to see it.
You responded, quote, "Our responsibility as prosecutors is to follow the evidence and the law regardless of the defendant, and that's what we're responsible for doing. And that's the only way the public is going to have confidence in the process if we proceed in accordance with that principle?"
Do you remember saying that?
A I remember saying something very much like that. Yes.
Q Is it still your testimony today that throughout this investigation, you and all prosecutors working on your team followed the evidence and the law when making decisions?
A Yeah. I absolutely believe that.
Q And is it still your testimony today that political considerations played no role in your decision‑making?
A I do not believe political matters played any role in mine or in the decision‑making or recommendations of other members of either my office or the Department of Justice Tax Division.
- Mr. Weiss testified—again—that other U.S. Attorney’s Offices’ decision not to partner with his own office on the Hunter Biden case did not affect his ability to bring the case. He also affirmed—again—that both offices offered support, and that their decision did not impede his case.
Q What was the reason ultimately the U.S. Attorney's Office in D.C. declined to partner with you?
A It's my recollection ‑‑ and this was line to line ‑‑ my folks had shared certain materials with the career folks in D.C. so as to allow them to get up to speed ‑‑ though you can only share a snapshot of what you've developed to that point in time ‑‑ but that D.C. had reached the conclusion that they didn't think we would prevail on many of the charges in question.
And the ultimate recommendation was for ‑‑ those years, they believed, were the stronger charges. They thought they would be better venued in California.
Q Did Mr. Graves offer you other support? He declined to partner with you, but did he offer you administrative support? Did he offer you the ability to send your U.S. Attorneys to D.C. to do it on their own?
A I didn't have a further conversation with Mr. Graves after that initial one that we've talked about previously and a little bit here today. But it was my impression, based on the feedback I received from my folks, that, yes, they would have ‑‑ D.C. was prepared to provide that local counsel support, which is all that I really would have desired.
Q Okay. That would allow you to operate a grand jury?
A Operate a grand jury, submit our filings, making sure that we were conducting our case and our pleadings in accordance with procedures in the District of D.C., and hopefully working with us on our judges, expectations, things like that.
Q Okay. So you had the ultimate authority over the charges you were trying to bring into D.C. Is that your ‑‑
A It was my understanding that I did, yes, based on assurance I ultimately received from Mr. Carlin and Mr. Weinsheimer, yes.
Q And I believe this also came up in the 2023 interview that you did.
The U.S. Attorney's Office in the District of Columbia decided not to partner with you, but they did offer to provide you with any necessary administrative support, correct?
A That's correct.
Q And that would have included, for example, making sure that your prosecutors had time before their grand jury, if necessary.
A Yes.
Q And when I say "their grand jury," the grand jury in ‑‑
A The D.C. grand jury, yes.
Q So the decision not to partner with you, did that prevent you from moving forward in the District of Columbia?
A No. It had no impact on where we ultimately ‑‑ yes ‑‑ on where we might or might not proceed.
Q So if you had wanted to bring charges in the District of Columbia, are you confident that you would have had the authority to do so?
A Yes.
Q What about the Central District of California? The decision ‑‑ they also decided not to partner with you, correct?
A Correct.
Q Did that prevent you from moving forward in this case?
A It did not.
Q And turning back to the conversations with the U.S. Attorney's Office in the Central District of California, the decision not to partner with you did not prevent you from moving forward in that jurisdiction, correct?
A It did not.
Q Okay. And ultimately, you did move forward in California, correct?
A We did.
Q You filed a rather lengthy indictment in California, correct?
A We filed an indictment in that case ‑‑ in California, yup.
Q And in the prior hour, majority counsel listed some of the allegations of deductions that were taken. Those were listed in the indictment, correct?
A They were spelled out in the indictment, yes.
Q So the fact that the Central District of California didn't partner with you didn't prevent you from making that information public, correct?
A No.
Q It didn't prevent you from filing an indictment.
A It did not.
Q And what was the outcome of the indictment that you filed in California?
A Mr. Biden ultimately pled open to the indictment in ‑‑ the charges set forth in the indictment in Central District of California.
Q So again, the fact that Martin Estrada chose not to partner with you didn't prevent you from obtaining a conviction in this case.
A It did not, nor did I ever think that it would.
Q And why do you say that?
A Because I always understood that whether he chose to participate or join in our effort, I was permitted to proceed in any event.
- Mr. Weiss made clear that he and other prosecutors made reasonable and good-faith decisions in the case—including charging decisions and whether or not to take certain investigative steps—after carefully considering many factors in accordance with the law and DOJ regulations, and that there were good explanations for the “irregularities” alleged by the IRS whistleblowers.
- He testified that he must—and did—weigh the strengths and weaknesses of a case, or any part of a case—before deciding to try the case.
“As a prosecutor, I'm saying that's a triable case. That means that there are strengths and weaknesses to the case. But I was comfortable that, you know, the way the admissible evidence would play ‑‑ and there are ‑‑ I'm comfortable saying this because I think it was part of the motions practice. There are risks. He suffered from addiction in '18. We emphasized the fact by the time it was filed in '20, he had been free from the addiction since May of '19.
How much evidence of the addiction was going to come in? How much ‑‑ whether there would be an expert to testify to the ramifications of a severe crack addiction that might linger into the months and years that follow? I certainly considered that. How much trauma evidence would come in that is familial circumstances, how far back that would go. Whether the fact that the taxes had been paid by a third party, whether that evidence would come in.
All these are considerations that we're considering ‑‑ that were publicly filed as part of the motions practice as part of the calculus.”
- He testified that AUSA Lesley Wolf omitted mentions of Biden in a Probable Cause (“PC”) application not out of political bias, as the Republicans had alleged, but because such evidence was not necessary or material for the application. The application was ultimately successful.
Q So the ‑‑ there's two emails here on page 1 of exhibit 6. The first is from an FBI official to Lesley Wolf, Carley Hudson, that reads, "Hello, all. Please see attached draft for BS SW," and we understand that to be blue star search warrant, and the email up top, Lesley Wolf replies, and she asks for some amount of redraft of attachment B. She wants them to focus on FARA evidence only, and she mentions there's ‑‑ there should be nothing about political figure 1 in here. Political figure 1, as we now know is, of course, the vice ‑‑ you know, Vice President Biden or the former Vice President. At that time, he was the nominee for the 2020 election. Do you have a recollection of this?
A I don't know that I have a recollection of this as it was occurring. I do have a recollection of this coming up, this issue.
Q So what's the basis for taking out Biden's name in this instance?
A My understanding was it wasn't necessary for PC. You put in what's required in an affidavit to establish probable cause. This clearly wasn't necessary because, as I understand it, the affidavit went forward, the ‑‑ we were successful in securing a search warrant. So it wasn't material in any way, I don't believe, as I recall to the affidavit. It just wasn't ‑‑ superfluous. That's why I think Lesley ‑‑ that's why I believe she suggested that it didn't belong, and it wasn't necessary.
- Mr. Weiss testified that prosecutors did not search then-Vice President Biden’s residence in September 2020 –where Hunter Biden had been residing—because of DOJ’s election-year policy against taking investigative steps that involved a presidential candidate close to the election. He testified that he had been in touch with then-Attorney General Bill Barr’s office, and understood that “there’s no way would I have been permitted to authorize the search.”
Q Are you aware at this meeting Ms. Wolf said there was enough probable cause for search warrants, but optics were a driving factor in the decision on whether to execute them.
A Okay.
Q Are you aware of that allegation?
A This is one I think I also learned of after the events, but I'm not sure, but is this the one involving a search of the former President's residence?
Q Correct. There's a few of these. There's the former President's residence, which, as we understand, Hunter Biden was living in at some point, and there was a storage unit.
A Yeah. I didn't even realize that we had ‑‑ I didn't ‑‑ I didn't recall this during the time. I didn't recall, and I don't know that we had PC to get into the Vice President's ‑‑ former President's residence. The truth is, in September of 2020, there is no way I would have authorized, nor would I have been permitted to authorize the search of the Democratic candidate for President's residence. Never would have happened. Not 60 days before an election.
Q Okay. And why is that?
A Because we're under election year policies then, and I had been having conversations with the Attorney General's Office. This is during the prior ‑‑ the Trump administration, the Attorney General's Office, the Office of the Deputy Attorney General, and regular communications with public integrity about these such things. I was very mindful of it and making sure we stayed within the lines. And we had I think, my recollection is we had had recent discussions with perhaps the PADAG and PIN about subpoenas and whether subpoenas, document subpoenas, were appropriate or necessary as of I think the end of August or early September, and the response as I recall was, "No, let's wait until after the election." Unless there was urgency or the risk of evidence being lost, there's no way a search warrant for one of the candidates residences would have been authorized because it introduces politics into what we're doing.
Q And you said something that I just want to make sure to clarify for the record.
You said that there was no way you would authorize the search of the residence of the Democratic candidate for President. Do you remember saying that?
A Yes. Not at that time.
Q In September of 2020?
A Yes.
Q Correct.
You said the Democratic candidate for President, but in fact any candidate you would not have been able to authorize. Is that correct?
A Yeah. I was just referring to the circumstances under ‑‑ in our situation. That is ‑‑ that's what I think would have ‑‑ the search would have entailed.
But, no, from my perspective, I don't think it would have been authorized for any candidate.
Q Okay. And so if there had been a hypothetical search warrant sought for a Republican candidate, you wouldn't have been able to authorize that either?
A No.
- Mr. Weiss testified that prosecutors opted for a subpoena rather than a search warrant of Hunter Biden’s storage unit because of the potential presence of attorney-client privileged records in the storage room. Rather than evidence of bias or misconduct, this was evidence of prosecutors assiduously trying to follow the rules in this case.
“I do recall the dispute and the discussion about whether to proceed with a search warrant versus a subpoena, but I know there was discussion about that. I believe we sought input from Office of Investigative Enforcement, OEO, because this was ‑‑ Hunter Biden's a lawyer. So his documents at the storage facility were likely to include attorney/client communications or communications to and from someone we knew to be an attorney. It implicated special circumstances and a protocol that had been put in place in the fourth circuit because there had been recent fourth circuit legal developments. And, therefore, we had input from OEO, from Policy and Statutory Enforcement, PSEU, and from the Eastern District of Virginia, because they were involved in the issue. And ultimately the decision was made, because of the privilege complications and the fact that, even under a search warrant process, you were going to have to involve a magistrate to review the privilege material before production or defense counsel himself in an overt investigation, and we were overt then, was going to have the opportunity to look at privileged material.
So the decision was made, "Let's just do it by subpoena. It's not worth it." Put the onus on defense to go through and deal with the privilege issues and produce to us as opposed to proceeding by way of the search warrant and all the complications that would entail. That's my best recollection for that back and forth and the issue, and I recall the agents being displeased with that conclusion.”
- Mr. Weiss testified that the prosecution team engaged in a “thorough” analysis before deciding to proceed with a diversion agreement, in the plea agreement offered to Hunter Biden in the summer of 2023.
Q And taking your words from earlier, the decision to think about a diversion agreement in this case was not made with a nefarious motive. Is that correct?
A No, it was not. I mean, our analysis was pretty thorough. We looked at literally every gun case we had prosecuted in trying to consider how we had handled prior gun cases, at least in the preceding X number of years. We looked at our straw purchase cases, we looked at our 922(g) cases to try to see what the contours were on how we had reached resolutions to start with.
Q And this is actually partly annotated in your special counsel report, the considerations of what gun charges to bring. Is that correct as well?
A I think so.
- Mr. Weiss repeatedly testified that ex-FBI informant Alexander Smirnov had provided false information from a Russian intelligence service to federal authorities about Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden in the months before the 2020 presidential election. Smirnov’s Russian-propagated lies became the basis of House Republicans’ Biden impeachment investigation. After Smirnov pled guilty to lying to authorities and was sentenced to six years in prison earlier this year, Trump’s DOJ moved to have Smirnov released from detention.
Q You've mentioned a couple times today the name Alexander Smirnov. Who is Alexander Smirnov?
A Alexander Smirnov was somebody that we prosecuted for lying to the FBI and for facilitating the FBI's creation of a false report in violation of Section 1519. And then we also prosecuted him for tax offenses.
Q You said in the earlier hour that your decision to request special counsel status in August of 2023 was prompted by your intention to prosecute Mr. Smirnov.
A That's correct.
Q You alluded to this a couple seconds ago, but can you briefly summarize what this 1023 claims?
A In general, it claims that there were two meetings in late '15, '16 between Mr. Smirnov and, I believe, Burisma representatives, and, subsequently, there were two phone calls. And, basically, during the course of these discussions the Burisma representatives indicated to Smirnov and two of his associates, Associate 1 and 2, who attended these meetings with him not both of them necessarily at each meeting that it was intimated that the Burisma CEO had paid President Biden and his son $5 million in order to have certain allegations disappear.
Q So the implication of the 1023 is that the confidential human source, Alexander Smirnov, had knowledge of Mykola Zlochevsky bribing the Bidens, correct?
A That's what he claimed had been shared with him over the course of the two meetings and the telephone calls and that he had tape recordings of these calls and that Zlochevsky had claimed he had recordings of these calls, numerous ones I think 15 with Hunter Biden, two with the President in which discussions along these lines took place, and things of that sort.
Q Were those allegations true?
A No, they were not true.
Q Is it fair to say they were fully fabricated?
A They were fabricated.
Q So, in other words, Mr. Smirnov had passed along false information from an intelligence service, either Russian or Ukrainian, which falsely implicated Hunter Biden in particular activities?
A That's what he claimed, right? Mr. Smirnov claimed that he received this information from--I believe you're correct --a Russian intelligence service that--false information about Hunter Biden. Now, again, Mr. Smirnov also admitted to fabricating the entire story we spoke about earlier.