Tipsheet

DOJ and The New York Times Were Colluding to Feed Lies to U.S. Attorney David Weiss

Rebecca Downs
Rebecca Downs  |  September 06, 2023 2:15 PM

Revelations continue to come pouring in to cast doubts on U.S. Attorney David Weiss, now special counsel, and his investigation into Hunter Biden. On Tuesday, The Federalist published an exclusive from Margot Cleveland, "FBI Lies About ‘Highly Credible’ Source Claims Were Leaked To NYT And Spoonfed To Weiss." 

The Heritage Foundation had obtained emails via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, which were then shared with The Federalist. According to Cleveland, they "reveal that lies leaked to The New York Times about the origins of damning evidence implicating Hunter and Joe Biden in a bribery scandal were fed to Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss."

Those lies were included in an article from The New York Times published on Dec. 11, 2020, which sought to place the focus on Rudy Giuliani, "Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden." The article is still up, and it appears there have been no corrections made. 

Cleveland also tweeted out a thread discussing key questions.

Cleveland's coverage from June also provided a helpful summary of issues with the article, noting that "[t]he article was replete with falsehoods and deceptive narratives, all designed to create the appearance that the investigation into the son of the soon-to-be president was politically motivated and lacking in merit. The piece was transparently timed to hit within days of Hunter Biden announcing Delaware prosecutors were investigating him for tax crimes."

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In reality, Giuliani had nothing to do with the FD-1023, rather it was provided by a "highly credible" FBI confidential human source (CHS), according to whistleblowers and former Attorney General Bill Barr.

The emails provide details on how the article came to Weiss, and raised further questions:

“Ladies, here you have attached the NYT’s story ‘Material from Giuliani Spurred a Separate Justice Depart. Pursuit of Hunter Biden’ which posted a bit ago. Link here,” a Dec. 11, 2020, 6:44 p.m. email from the FBI Office of Public Affairs’ National Press Office read. 

The names of the two email recipients were redacted. But the “(PG) (FBI)” and “(BA) (FBI)” coding suggests the National Press Office had forwarded the Times’ article, which spun evidence obtained by the Pittsburgh office as originating from Giuliani disinformation, to the Pittsburgh FBI office and the Baltimore FBI office — which provided support for the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office.

Within two hours of the FBI’s National Press Office sharing the false narrative about evidence of Biden family corruption, the link had been forwarded to a variety of Baltimore FBI agents, from there to Weiss’s top deputies Lesley Wolf and Shawn Weede, and further on by Weede to fellow Assistant U.S. Attorney Shannon Hanson and Weiss. Weiss himself then forwarded the Times article to another member of the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office, whose name was redacted in the FOIA-provided documents. 

Given the sweetheart deal Weiss’s top Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf later tried to gift to Hunter Biden, this latest revelation raises the question of whether (and, if so, when) Weiss’s staff informed him of the CHS’s reporting that Burisma paid $5 million each in bribes to both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden.

These questions are now more important than ever because the just-released emails show Weiss’s staff sharing with him The New York Times’ false reporting that portrayed evidence coming from the Pittsburgh FBI office as sourced solely to Rudy Giuliani. But that’s not true — not by a long shot. At a minimum, Wolf and others in the Delaware office knew that — but Weiss might not have.

The narrative about Giuliani is one that top Democrats have used, such as Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, who serves as the ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, who has also depended on other false narratives. As more of the Tuesday exclusive mentions:

The unredacted portions of the FD-1023 confirmed Giuliani had nothing to do with the sourcing of the intel. On the contrary, according to the form, the longtime CHS had personally conversed with Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma, and the company’s CFO Vadim Pojarskii.

...

When news first broke of the FD-1023 and its damning indictment of the Bidens, Democrats and their paramours in the press tried to bury the story with a one-two punch. First, they framed the evidence as originating from Giuliani and part of a foreign disinformation operation. Grassley’s release of the actual FD-1023 destroyed that narrative. 

Second, they falsely represented to the American public that Brady had already investigated the FD-1023 and closed the investigation as meritless. But as The Federalist first reported, that claim was blatantly false. 

“It’s not true. It wasn’t closed down,” Barr told The Federalist after Democrat Rep. Jamie Raskin falsely claimed that “the former attorney general and his ‘handpicked prosecutor’ had ended an investigation into a confidential human source’s allegation that Joe Biden had agreed to a $5 million bribe.” 

“On the contrary,” Barr told The Federalist, “it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”

There are so many questions and so much confusion about Weiss and what he knew, as Cleveland notes. Questions and confusion abounding as to what authority Weiss had in bringing charges against Hunter Biden, before he was appointed as special counsel last month.

Delaware Assistant U.S. Attorney Lesley Wolf, who is mentioned in Cleveland's report and who is a Democratic donor, as if her husband, looks to be a name to pay attention to. Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, which is representing IRS Whistleblower Gary Shapley certainly seems to think so.