A prosecutor who signed off on the documents charging Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes previously worked with one of the First Son’s business partners.
Delaware US Attorney David Weiss officially filed charges against the president’s son last Tuesday after a near five-year probe into his alleged tax crimes and foreign financial dealings.
Weiss’s deputy, Assistant United States Attorney Derek Hines, signed off on the charging documents alongside his boss and two other assistant US attorneys – indicating he has a central role in Hunter’s criminal prosecution.
According to Hines’s LinkedIn account, he previously worked as Special Counsel to ex-FBI director Louis Freeh at his private company, Freeh Group International Solutions, a lobbying and ‘risk management’ consultancy that teamed up with Hunter on overseas business currently under scrutiny by lawmakers.
Freeh worked with Hunter on a $3million job consulting for a Romanian criminal, a deal that is allegedly now part of his federal criminal investigation and is being investigated by Congress.
Republican Senator Ron Johnson said the link between the prosecutor and Hunter’s business associate ‘calls into question the integrity of their entire investigation’ – after GOP lawmakers slammed the relatively minor charges filed by the Delaware prosecutor this week as a mere ‘slap on the wrist’.
It was revealed that Freeh and his firm worked closely with Hunter Biden trying to get the US State Department to help limit the prosecution of Romanian real estate tycoon Gabriel Popoviciu, who was on the brink of a bribery conviction in 2015.
Freeh proposed setting up a private consultancy with Hunter and Joe Biden when he ended his vice presidential term, offering ‘lucrative future work options’ including working for overseas clients such as corrupt former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak.
He also sent $100,000 to a private trust for Joe’s grandchildren – though he wrote an email to Hunter saying it was intended for a charity instead.
Hines’s LinkedIn says he worked as ‘Special Counsel’ for the ex-FBI director at his company Freeh Group in New Orleans, Louisiana, between August 2013 and February 2015.
I is unclear what projects he counseled Freeh on.It wasn’t until 2016 that Hunter started working with Freeh consulting for Popoviciu.
But emails on his laptop show the Biden family had a close relationship with Freeh – – who headed the FBI from 1993-2001 – dating back to when Hines worked for him.
In a 2014 press release, Freeh described Joe Biden and his son Beau as ‘dear friends’, and in a May 2010 email to a colleague Hunter said Freeh was ‘a close friend.’
In December 2014, Freeh was described with others as a ‘strong contact for possible referral/collaboration’ with Hunter and his brother Beau in an email laying out their plans for a ‘Biden Law Group’, written by Beau’s former Delaware Attorney General deputy Ian McConnel.
After Beau’s death in May 2015, Freeh became a board member of the Beau Biden Foundation for the Protection of Children. In August that year a charity executive thanked Freeh for donating to Joe Biden’s potential 2016 presidential run.
The link between Hines, one of four top prosecutors in Hunter’s criminal case, and his former employer Freeh, could create a conflict for the Department of Justice attorney.
Title 28, Section 45.2 of the Code of Federal Regulations says: ‘no employee shall participate in a criminal investigation if he has a personal or political relationship with […] any person or organization substantially involved in the conduct that is the subject of the investigation’.
Hunter’s $3million from Popoviciu was part of a total $17.3million income investigated by the IRS in their Hunter Biden tax crime probe, which formed the basis for this week’s criminal charges, according to Congressional testimony by an IRS whistleblower who led the investigation.
The IRS special agent’s claims suggest Hunter’s work with Freeh in Romania were likely part of the Delaware probe.
The House Oversight Committee documented the same $3million flowing from Popoviciu’s accounts to the Biden family, via intermediaries, using bank records lawmakers obtained with subpoenas.
