Tucker Carlson reports DOJ hired ex-business partner of Hunter Biden criminal defense attorney
by Daniel Chaitin, Breaking News Editor & Jerry Dunleavy, Justice Department Reporter |
January 29, 2021
Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported a former business partner of Hunter Biden’s criminal defense attorney has been picked as a top Justice Department official in President Biden’s new administration.
It has already been revealed that Nicholas McQuaid, a former federal prosecutor, was picked as acting chief of the Justice Department’s criminal division. Hunter Biden confirmed in early December, after his father won the 2020 election, that he was under federal investigation.
Carlson said on his show Friday night that McQuaid worked with Christopher Clark as partners at Latham & Watkins and worked on cases together right until McQuaid took the job at the Justice Department.
“On Jan. 21 of this year, the same day Nicholas McQuaid was featured in the Justice Department press release, Latham & Watkins filed a motion in court to withdraw McQuaid as an attorney [in a case] he was working on with Christopher Clark. So that means Joe Biden put at the head of the criminal division the partner of the guy his son had hired to defend him against the criminal division. Whoa,” Carlson said.
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“We reached out to the Justice Department for a comment on this,” Carlson added. “They refused to say whether McQuaid would recuse himself for matters involving Hunter Biden and his former partner, who is representing Hunter Biden. It’s all pretty amazing. Another reminder, there’s a lot going on within the Biden family.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
McQuaid, the new acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s criminal division, had served as a deputy White House counsel during the Obama administration and also spent years as a prosecutor with the Southern District of New York before going into private practice. McQuaid and Clark are listed on court filings together in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York throughout 2020.
Law.com reported on Dec. 15 that “Hunter Biden hired Latham & Watkins partner Christopher Clark as he came under a federal investigation focused on his taxes and business.” Clark, who is currently listed as a New York partner at Latham & Watkins, did not immediately respond to the Washington Examiner’s questions about his business relationship with McQuaid, his representation of Hunter Biden, and whether he had ever discussed Biden’s case with McQuaid. McQuaid’s name has since been removed from the Latham & Watkins website, likely after his final day there last week, but he had also been listed as a New York partner for the firm.
On Jan. 21, the day after President Biden was inaugurated, Law.com reported that McQuaid “has been named acting leader of the U.S. Justice Department’s criminal division … according to people familiar with the move.” The same day, McQuaid told the court that he had withdrawn from the case with Clark, telling Judge Paul Engelmayer, “I am writing the Court to respectfully request that I be relieved as counsel for Defendant Brown Rudnick LLP” because “my last day at Latham & Watkins was January 20, 2021.” He said that Clark and two other attorneys would continue to represent their client, and the judge let him leave the case.
In a statement shared in a December press release from the Biden transition team, which announced that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware reached out to Hunter Biden’s legal counsel the day before, the younger Biden said, “I am confident that a professional and objective review of these matters will demonstrate that I handled my affairs legally and appropriately, including with the benefit of professional tax advisors.”
President Biden says he has no involvement in his family’s business dealings, but increasing scrutiny has been placed on their ventures. He told CNN in December that his family would avoid conflicts of interest. “My son, my family will not be involved in any business, any enterprise that is in conflict with or appears to be in conflict, with inappropriate distance from the presidency and government,” he said.
Biden’s younger brother, Frank, touted his ties to the Biden administration during an Inauguration Day advertisement for the Berman Law Group, a firm based in Boca Raton, Florida, where Biden is a non-attorney adviser.
A report published by Politico this week said Biden warned Frank about his potential business dealings during his campaign. “For Christ’s sake, watch yourself,” Biden said, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. “Don’t get sucked into something that would, first of all, hurt you.”
In December, Politico reported that federal authorities were also conducting a criminal investigation into a hospital business that has ties to James Biden, another brother of President Biden.
Hunter Biden has reportedly been under criminal investigation stretching as far back as 2018 as federal authorities scrutinize his taxes and foreign business dealings, and the 50-year-old’s financial transactions with China are likely at the forefront. Biden’s campaign, along with many in the media, dismissed the Hunter Biden laptop story and other allegations as being part of a Russian disinformation operation, though former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said he had not seen “intelligence that supports that … Hunter Biden’s laptop is part of some Russian disinformation campaign.”
Jen Psaki, who is now President Biden’s White House press secretary, said in December that Biden would not discuss the investigation of his son Hunter with any of his candidates for attorney general, even after one takes office, but declined to say whether Biden would keep on David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware known to be investigating the younger Biden’s taxes.
Biden picked Judge Merrick Garland to be his nominee for attorney general. As Garland awaits Senate confirmation, DOJ veteran Monty Wilkinson is serving as acting attorney general.
McQuaid, Clark, and other lawyers from Latham & Watkins had been representing Brown Rudnick LLP in a malpractice suit against it by the trustee for the bankrupt Lyondell Chemical Company. Law 360 said Brown Rudnick had been “facing allegations that the firm bungled a $300 million clawback effort by failing to prove that the company was insolvent.” The outlet reported that “Lyondell bankruptcy trustee Mark E. Holliday sued in 2019, alleging Brown Rudnick failed to point out that the company owed $8 billion in additional debt that hadn’t been counted against its valuation of $13 billion” and that “the firm allegedly made that mistake by only looking at the books of Lyondell’s holding company and other entities but not Lyondell itself.”
The presiding judge said on Tuesday that both sides advised the court “that all claims asserted herein have been settled in principle” and ordered the case dismissed.
McQuaid made a splash in his new gig this week when the Biden Justice Department announced it had charged Douglass Mackey, a formerly anonymous pro-Trump Twitter troll who went by his “Ricky Vaughn” online alias for his alleged role in spreading disinformation during the 2016 presidential election. Federal authorities said he assisted in a scheme urging people to use illegitimate means, including by text, to vote.
“According to the allegations in the complaint, the defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to vote,” McQuaid said Wednesday. “This complaint underscores the department’s commitment to investigating and prosecuting those who would undermine citizens’ voting rights.”
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