by Steven Richards
A respected prosecutor offered witness statements to the DOJ on alleged Hunter Biden corruption; they declined the offer and subpoenaed his phone records instead.
When a respected former prosecutor approached the Justice Department in 2018 with a witness who claimed he had evidence on Hunter Biden's alleged misdeeds, they discounted his offer and later subpoenaed his private phone records.
The incident is regaining new salience after recent revelations that DOJ special counsel Jack Smith cast a net of subpoenas for phone records of several GOP members of Congress and even obtained government phones that had belonged to President Donald Trump and his former vice president.
The Trump Justice Department believes these kinds of incidents are interconnected. Officials quietly opened a probe this summer that treats the last decade of political "weaponization" of law enforcement and intelligence agencies as an ongoing criminal conspiracy. The agency is reportedly investigating a decade of Democratic Party and "deep-state" efforts ranging from ginning up the Trump-Russia collusion narrative to examining Smith's pursuit of Trump.
The man who originally brought that Hunter Biden evidence to the Justice Department, former United States Attorney Bud Cummins, recently told Just the News that history has vindicated what the DOJ declined to probe and blamed “a real culture problem” within the agency and the FBI for the decision.
Just the News first reported in 2023 that Cummins, then a private attorney, approached the Justice Department in fall 2018 on behalf of a foreign witness who claimed to have evidence that Joe Biden had "exercised influence to protect" his son's employer in Ukraine in return for money for his family.
The agency didn't take up the ex-prosecutor on his offer but instead secretly obtained his phone records a year later in an apparent effort to identify his contacts.
“So years down the road, I started getting notices that I'd been the subject of subpoenas out of the Southern District of New York, presumably related to me, trying to offer the federal government information about Hunter Biden,” Cummins told the Just the News, No Noise TV show.
“I've always said I don't really have a problem with [the DOJ] trying to take a look at me and seeing who I'm talking to and what's motivating me to come forward with this extraordinary offer of evidence,” he continued. “I do have a problem with them ignoring the extraordinary offer of evidence completely, which is what they did, and then investigating me, but that's what happened.”
In Oct. 2018, Cummins wrote then-New York U.S. Attorney Geoffrey Berman that then-Ukraine Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko was willing to travel to the United States to present evidence about the Bidens and Burisma Holdings.
Lutsenko believes "VP Biden (and Sec State Kerry) exercised influence to protect Burisma Holdings in exchange for payments to Hunter Biden, (business partner) Devon Archer, and Joe Biden," Cummins emailed Berman.
In a series of emails, Cummins said Lutsenko could produce two "John Doe" witnesses who could corroborate the claims, including that some of the money Burisma paid to Hunter Biden as a board member for Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky's firm benefited Joe Biden.
"There is a claim they have proof of a wire of significant funds from Zlochevsky to Rosemont Seneca Partners LLC, which they claim directly went to the benefit of Joe Biden," Cummins wrote. "I have never understood why they think they know it went to him. I think the entity was associated with Hunter Biden and Archer.
"All I have been told is that the person who made the transfers was told that 'one goes to Joe Biden.' A little thin," Cummins wrote in one of several emails trying to prod Berman to set up a meeting, Just the News previously reported.
In a prior interview with Just the News, Cummins said he was surprised DOJ didn't engage and try to determine if what Ukrainian officials were alleging was true.
"I can't really imagine a legitimate reason for the DOJ not to follow up on an offer like that," he said. "I felt like it was stonewalled."
Now, seven years later, Cummins says the evidence he wanted to provide the Justice Department has been verified through investigative reporting, an IRS probe, and congressional investigations targeting Hunter Biden.
Two IRS investigators turned whistleblowers brought to Congress in 2023 concerns about efforts by Justice Department political appointees to thwart a $2.2 million tax case that agents had compiled against Hunter Biden that included a failure to pay owed amounts on income from Burisma. Those IRS whistleblowers later faced retaliation from their agency for bringing those concerns to lawmakers.
Later, a House impeachment inquiry against Hunter’s father, President Joe Biden, determined that the president engaged in impeachable conduct by helping to enrich his family with millions of dollars in business schemes that traded on his name, then defrauded voters by lying to cover up the scandal.
The committee cited evidence that Biden “actively participated” in an influence-peddling conspiracy by attending dinners with his family’s foreign associates and speaking to them over the phone. These interactions were documented by email evidence and testimony from several of Hunter Biden’s ex-business partners, including Devon Archer.
The committee also said evidence shows Hunter Biden used his father’s official position as vice president to “garner favorable outcomes in foreign business dealings and legal proceedings.”
One key example cited by House investigators is Hunter Biden’s role on the board of directors of the embattled Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, whose owner Mykola Zlochevksy was facing corruption allegations in Ukraine. The younger Biden received a $1 million a year salary for his role on the board.
After receiving that position, he would use his influence in Washington, D.C., to help organize a public relations campaign for the company and work to shut down the corruption investigation into Zlochevsky, even meeting personally with State Department officials, Just the News reported.
“When I offered the evidence, I had no idea what it was or the background. I just knew that there was a high-level individual in Ukraine that was offering to come tell the story and bring documentary evidence,” Cummins said. “It sounded plausible to me at the time. It was pretty, pretty bad, but it played out exactly like it was presented to me in 2018.”
The episode appears to be one of the earliest examples of Justice Department officials discounting potentially criminal evidence against prominent Democrats while at the same time turning their investigative tools against conservatives.
For example, two Justice officials later on special counsel Smith’s Jan. 6 investigation team aimed at President Trump were earlier linked to the blocking of an FBI inquiry into the Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s 2016 funding of the Steele Dossier for campaign finance violations, according to new records released by the Senate.
The FBI would ultimately pass on a criminal investigation into the campaign finance angle, Just the News previously reported. Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who released the records this week, said two future members of Smith’s team were responsible.
Smith and his team later reportedly issued sweeping subpoenas for private phone records as part of their investigation into the Capitol riot of January 6, 2021, dubbed "Arctic Frost." These included records for eight Republican senators and one GOP House member.
Smith also issued nearly 200 subpoenas in his sweeping Arctic Frost-linked case, seeking records on more than 400 Republican personalities and groups, according to records previously released by Grassley.
Unearthed emails also show that the Biden White House Counsel’s Office coordinated with an FBI agent to hand over phones that had belonged to Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence.
Steven Richards
Source: https://justthenews.com/accountability/political-ethics/seizure-phone-records-become-pattern-center-grand-conspiracy
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