WASHINGTON (CN) — “What are we even doing here?” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes asked multiple times during a hearing Friday in a lawsuit filed by the House Judiciary Committee on March 21 to enforce a subpoenas against two attorneys involved in the Hunter Biden probe.
Reyes, a Joe Biden appointee, took issue with the positions of both the Justice Department and the committee regarding a deposition that would ultimately amount to very little thanks to a host of privileges the attorneys could invoke to avoid answering questions.
“The taxpayers do not want to fund this grudge match between the Legislative and Executive branches,” Reyes said, noting that if the litigation was to continue, there would likely be no resolution until late 2025 at the earliest.
Friday’s status conference comes two weeks after the House Judiciary Committee filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to force Mark Daly and Jack Morgan to appear for a deposition before the Republican-run committee.
Daly and Morgan, two attorneys with the Justice Department Tax Division, were subpoenaed for their “firsthand knowledge of the irregularities in DOJ’s investigation that appear to have benefited Hunter Biden.”
According to the committee, the pair were members of the team that recommended what charges to bring against Hunter Biden for suspected tax crimes in 2014 and 2015 when he served on the board of Ukrainian company Burisma, and initially agreed the younger Biden should be charged. But after an unidentified number of months, the pair reversed course and suggested Hunter Biden should not be charged.
Following the reversal, the Justice Department allowed the statute of limitations for the charges to lapse. The committee — represented in the suit by House of Representatives general counsel Matthew Berry — highlights this sequence of events as a key part of why the committee sees their testimony as crucial.
According to the committee, the Justice Department instructed Daly and Morgan to defy the committee’s initial subpoena, arguing that under House rules “a lawyer who represents the Executive Branch’s interests, not Daly’s or Morgan’s, cannot attend.” The department believed that rule made the subpoena unconstitutional, and therefore decided to ignore it.
Reyes noted that a key issue in the dispute appeared to be “which side of the door” the Executive Branch’s attorneys would sit.
She wondered aloud whether to issue an order requiring the committee to allow breaks whenever Daly and Morgan asked to consult with counsel sitting outside the room.
Reyes said that the DOJ had flouted standard procedure to fight a subpoena by not requesting a protective order from a judge to block it. By ignoring it entirely, the Justice Department was playing with fire.
“I find it rich that you pursue criminal action and put people in jail for defying congressional subpoenas, then say this here,” Reyes said. She specifically referenced former senior Trump adviser Peter Navarro, who recently began a 4-month prison sentence for contempt of Congress on March 19.
Justice Department attorney James Gilligan tried to argue that the decision to defy the subpoena came after lengthy deliberations “at a high level,” but Reyes gave that little credit.
Berry, representing the Judiciary Committee, was subject to just as much scrutiny.
Reyes was confused why the committee was fighting so hard to enforce the subpoenas, as Daly and Morgan are line attorneys — in charge of the day-to-day legal responsibilities of the case — whose testimony would be subject to multiple layers of privilege, from prosecutorial privilege to executive privilege.
Berry answered that some “work privileges” would not apply, but Reyes said there was “no way” that could be true for line attorneys.
To avoid wasting countless taxpayer funds on arguments over such privileges, Reyes ordered Berry and Gilligan to meet at Berry’s office Wednesday morning and spend four hours negotiating.
She added that they would each be joined by another attorney, who could then testify in court later if they could not come to an agreement as to whether they acted in good faith and explain what happened. The parties would file a status report by Thursday, and the court would move forward from there.
“Bad cases make bad law,” Reyes reminded the parties, warning the Justice Department that if the case continues its apparent argument of immunity from subpoenas would be put into the record for future defense attorneys to cite.
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