Of all the people President Joe Biden could have nominated to lead the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), he chose a person who worked with his son, Hunter, at a law firm that represented Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings — a move that House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) said “raises concerns.”
The U.S. Office of Special Counsel’s “primary mission,” according to its government website, is to “safeguard the mer​it system by protecting federal employees and applicants from prohibited personnel practices, especially reprisal for whistleblowing.”
As an an independent federal investigative and prosecutorial agency, the OSC’s “basic authorities come from four federal statutes: the Ci​vil Service Reform Act, the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Hatch Act, and the Uniformed Services Employment & Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA),” the agency states.
On Tuesday, the White House announced President Biden’s nomination of Hampton Dellinger as special counsel.
“President Biden’s decision to appoint Hunter Biden’s former colleague as head of the Office of Special Counsel raises concerns that he’s trying to protect his son instead of whistleblowers,” Comer told Fox News Digital.
“The Office of Special Counsel is responsible for investigating whistleblower retaliation at agencies like the Departments of Justice and the Treasury,” Comer explained. “Naming a Biden family crony to this position does not instill confidence that the law will be enforced fairly.”
According to the White House, Dellinger “served in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) as an Assistant Attorney General overseeing the Office of Legal Policy (OLP) until June 2023.”
Biden appointed him for that position, too, and, the White House says he was “confirmed by the United States Senate with bipartisan support in October 2021.”
But Fox News Digital dug back prior to Dellinger’s government career, reporting that he “worked on Boies Schiller Flexner’s Crisis Management and Government Response team while Hunter Biden served as counsel at the firm.”
“The firm had represented Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, where Hunter Biden had served on its board of directors,” the outlet notes.
Emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned ‘laptop from hell’ reveal that the president’s son worked closely with lawyers on the firm’s crisis management team. In March 2014, emails show that Hunter attended a private gathering with firm employees, including Dellinger.
A February 2014 email exchange discussed an upcoming attorney lunch.
“Dellinger told Hunter it was ‘great to see [him] last week’ and asked whether he would be attending an attorney lunch,” Fox News Digital reports. “Hunter appeared to have a conflict, but said he would be in the office the next day.”
“I will be here tomorrow and be great to catch up,” Dellinger replied.
Weeks after the March dinner party, Hunter said he introduced Burisma as a potential Boies Schiller Flexner client.
Hunter said he was brainstorming with Burisma to “think strategically about the current crisis and expansion of their existing domestic operations” in an April 2014 email and suggested they meet with Crisis Management and Government Response team members, according to Fox News Digital.
The outlet continues:
Multiple Boies Schiller partners cc’d on the emails that included Dellinger were closely in contact with Hunter and his longtime business partner, Eric Schwerin, in 2014 and 2015, as Hunter relied on them for crisis management for Burisma-related matters. Partners Michael Gottlieb, Karen Dunn, and Heather King were frequently mentioned in Burisma-related emails. However, it is unclear whether Dellinger was involved.
On the bright side, Fox News Digital does stress, “The position Biden nominated Dellinger for is unrelated to the special counsel currently investigating the president’s handling of classified documents.”
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Melissa Fine is the former executive editor of Casino Player, Strictly Slots, and Poker
Digest magazines. She is a UCLA graduate, news junkie, and dedicated Stargate SG-
1 fan. Melissa currently lives with her dog and two cats in a tiny town in the Sierra
Nevada foothills.
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