GOP blasts Hunter Biden lawyer for ‘threatening to use’ president as first son’s witness

House chairmen leading the congressional investigation into Joe and Hunter Biden were among those to denounce the revelation, which surfaced through a trove of leaked emails to Politico over the weekend.

“Hunter Biden’s attorneys’ threats to call Joe Biden to testify in his son’s legal defense is just another example of how the Bidens have used ‘the brand’ to receive privileges no other American would ever be given,” Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-KY) told the Washington Examiner.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) also said it “sounded like more of a threat” from Clark and noted that Joe Biden would be subject to cross-examination if called as a witness in court.

“You wonder how President Biden would handle that,” Jordan said, adding that the “biggest takeaway,” however, was that Hunter Biden had been close to evading charges altogether.

A few weeks after a media report published on Oct. 6, 2022, that said prosecutors, led by now-special counsel David Weiss, had enough evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes, Clark lashed out at Weiss. He called the report the result of an “illegal” leak and said that because Joe Biden was forced to answer for his son in subsequent interviews, he automatically would become a witness if Hunter Biden were charged, Politico reported.

“President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial,” Clark wrote to Weiss, according to the outlet.

The comment came as part of a lengthy argument Clark had made to Weiss that Hunter Biden should not be charged because the prosecution would be viewed as a cave to political pressure from Republicans. The case also does not justify “the spectacle of a sitting President testifying at a criminal trial” or the “Constitutional crisis” that would present, Clark argued.

Two IRS investigators working on the case would later raise alarms to Congress about a meeting they attended on Oct. 7, 2022, that they said was one of numerous signs that Hunter Biden was receiving special treatment in the case.

A lawyer for Gary Shapley, one of the IRS whistleblowers, said Clark warning he would have Joe Biden testify “dovetails with the whistleblower testimony that Clark threatened the prosecutors with ‘career suicide.'”

Indeed even before October, Clark had made that threat to Weiss in the summer of 2022, suggesting that charging Hunter Biden would damage Weiss’s career.

“Seems like it’s just [Clark] getting more specific,” Shapley attorney Jason Foster said.

A spokesperson for Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), a co-chair of the Whistleblower Protection Caucus who has long been involved with vetting aspects of the Biden family investigation, said in a statement of the Politico report that “there’s nothing political” about calling for fair application of the law.

“What is political is threatening to use the influence of the sitting president of the United States to protect Hunter Biden from facing justice,” the spokesperson said. “But, as Sen. Grassley has repeatedly pointed out, political infection has found no better home than the Biden DOJ.”

The prosecution against Hunter Biden, the result of a yearslong investigation, remains ongoing after a plea deal he was set to enter into with Weiss fell apart in July.

The deal involved the younger Biden pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and signing a pretrial diversion agreement to avoid a felony gun charge.

Weiss, who was recently appointed special counsel in the case, said in a court filing he and Hunter Biden’s attorneys were now at “an impasse,” indicating the case could go to trial.

Clark last week stepped down as the younger Biden’s attorney because, he said, he himself may now serve as a witness to the plea dispute in a potential trial.