The Heritage Foundation on Monday is filing an amicus, or "friend of the court," brief in Delaware in connection with the upcoming court hearing on Hunter Biden's plea agreement. The brief lays out the case that there are questions about whether U.S. Attorney David Weiss' investigation was "truly independent," Julianne Murray, who chairs the Delaware Republican Party, told Newsmax.
"Did [Attorney General] Merrick Garland mislead us by saying it was independent when it really wasn't? Murray, also the lead counsel for the law firm filing the brief, said on Monday's "National Report." "Was Weiss blocked from making felony charges?"
The Heritage Foundation doesn't have "all the documents that we need," Murray added, "but we know that there's stuff out there. Weiss has contradicted himself. Merrick Garland has contradicted himself."
Murray said the two IRS whistleblowers, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, who testified before the House Oversight Committee that the Department of Justice hindered the investigation into the president's son, "have blown the lid off of all of it, and that has happened in the last month."
Murray disputed reports that the brief is 2,500 pages long.
"How that story got out, I don't know," she said. "That would be the longest brief in the history of briefs."
The numbers, she explained, come from an underlying case filed in March in the District of Columbia by the Heritage Foundation and a branch of the organization, the Heritage Oversight Project.
"They filed a FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] request back in March 2023 seeking communications from David Weiss," Murray said. "The DOJ said that there are about 2,500 pages. That's where that number comes from, 2,500 pages of potentially responsive documents, but they didn't produce any of them. They were saying it was taking too long to do it."
Those attorneys sought a preliminary injunction in the District of Columbia, asking the court to intervene and to order the DOJ to produce the documents more quickly, but their request was denied, Murray said.
Murray said she agrees with contentions from people such as House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., that the Biden case, and the plea agreement he's reached to plead guilty to just two misdemeanor charges, shows a "two-tier justice system" in America, but stressed that is not what the Heritage brief being filed Monday is about.
Instead, the brief is to get on the record the questions about claims that there was an independent investigation, free of the DOJ, against Hunter Biden, Murray said.
"What we're saying is, if this wasn't independent, if David Weiss really didn't have the authority that he was supposed to have in order to come to this conclusion, that is not in the interest of justice," she said.
But Murray said she does agree that there is an unequal system of justice and that conservatives are seeing "much more harsh treatment" than people such as Hunter Biden.
"I've also seen where people are saying that Hunter is being picked on and that nobody else would be picked on for this," Murray said. "I think that's ludicrous."
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Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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