Federal prosecutor hid Hunter Biden investigation until after the 2020 election

Prosecutors who were investigating Hunter Biden last summer could have sought search warrants and issued several grand jury subpoenas earlier, but other federal officials involved advised Delaware's US Attorney David Weiss to avoid taking any actions that could alert the public to the existence of the case.

The delay came out of purported fears that the public knowledge would affect Trump-Biden contest between the presidential contenders.

"To his credit, he listened," said an individual involved in the discussions, Politico reported Friday. Weiss, a veteran US attorney known for his willingness to take on powerful Delaware figures, decided to wait, averting the possibility that the probe would become a months-long campaign scandal and kept the investigation into President Joe Biden's son out of the 2020 race.

The Hunter Biden probe, which is focused on possible tax law violations, has also examined the president's controversial son's overseas business dealings with foreign interests. The tax investigation was launched in 2018, the year before the elder Biden announced his candidacy for president.

Weiss, who was appointed under the Trump administration on the recommendation of Delaware's two Democratic senators, was asked to stay in the position by the current White House. Politico noted that Weiss possesses "a bipartisan reputation for professionalism."

"I remember thinking he's a straight shooter, and he's the perfect one to have it," remarked longtime Delaware defense lawyer Dan Lyons on the case's oversight. Lyons has known Weiss since the 1980s when he defended one of the first cases the US attorney ever prosecuted. "He would just go where the evidence led him," Lyons said during Politico's interviews with Delaware's legal community.

Weiss also has a long track record of taking on the Delaware establishment, Politico detailed. While Biden has touted "the Delaware Way," the nickname for the state's cozy political culture, as a positive model for bipartisan cooperation, Weiss has spent three decades confronting its excesses.

Weiss served earlier on as a special prosecutor during a federal crackdown on bribery and extortion among Delaware politicians of both parties. He helped later nab a former Delaware deputy attorney general who murdered his girlfriend. A decade ago, Weiss even investigated Biden's presidential campaign fundraising, enlisting a beer distributor to be an FBI informant and record conversations with Biden's associates.

"He's got an appreciation," said a former prosecutor and close colleague of Weiss, "that there are times when the Delaware Way can turn into something more nefarious." Weiss is now weighing whether to seek charges against a president's son who has intermingled his business affairs with the Biden family's political connections. Most are expecting that Weiss will not drop the case until making a full assessment of Hunter Biden's culpability.

The investigation's existence first came to public light thanks to the explosive New York Post bombshell report on the leak of Hunter Biden's infamous laptop files.

According to Politico's inside source, concerns about affecting the presidential election loomed when Weiss entertained arguments about advancing the investigation. The decision would've yield scrutiny for politicizing the probe in a charged political atmosphere, the source noted. Weiss's inaction is consistent with his sober-minded approach, said people familiar with the US attorney's career.

"It was a close call," stated the one inside source, who believes Weiss was right to hold off. "That case has way more credibility now," the individual said.

The criminal investigation—that pursued suspicions of possible money laundering and violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act—came to focus on whether Hunter Biden had paid taxes on all of his income.