An FBI agent has told the House Oversight Committee that Hunter Biden and his father’s transition team received advance notice that the FBI was seeking to interview the younger Mr. Biden, a tip-off that led to the interview never happening. 

Instead, the agent testified, the FBI was told to stand down until Mr. Biden contacted them, which he did not. 

The allegations were originally made by an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower, Gary Shapley, who came forward earlier this year, claiming that Mr. Biden received “preferential treatment” from the Department of Justice as it was investigating multiple potential crimes. The interview with the unnamed FBI agent is meant to confirm Mr. Shapley’s claims. 

The chairman of the Oversight Committee, Congressman James Comer, says the FBI agent’s interview is just another piece of evidence that confirms the “preferential treatment” for Mr. Biden. Mr. Comer has also criticized the man leading the investigation, the United States attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, who offered Mr. Biden a plea deal earlier this year that would have allowed him to avoid jail time. The plea agreement, widely criticized by GOP lawmakers as “a sweetheart deal,” collapsed when a federal judge at Delaware raised questions about some of its more unusual provisions. 

“Tipping off the transition team and not being able to interview Hunter Biden as planned are just a couple of examples that reveal the Justice Department’s misconduct in the Biden criminal investigation that occurred under U.S. Attorney Weiss’ watch,” Mr. Comer said in a statement Monday. 

On Friday, Mr. Weiss was given special counsel status to investigate other potential misdeeds by the first son, which Republicans claim is an attempt to “stonewall” the congressional investigation by making it harder for GOP lawmakers to gain access to government documents and to Mr. Weiss himself. 

In the interview with the committee, the agent said Mr. Biden was granted Secret Service protection on December 3, 2020 — just a few weeks after his father had been declared the winner in the presidential election. The same day the Secret Service protection was conferred, the FBI made the decision to interview Mr. Biden on December 8. The plan, the agent said, was to inform the Secret Service on the morning of the interview so that the information would not be leaked beforehand. 

“The initial plan was to have the local field office of the Secret Service be notified the morning of to diminish opportunities for anybody else to be notified,” the agent said. At the time, Mr. Biden was living in California, and the FBI’s plan was to alert the local Secret Service field office at Los Angeles. 

The plan was disrupted when FBI leadership at the District of Columbia gave advance notice to the Secret Service, which then informed members of President Biden’s transition team. Mr. Biden’s Secret Service detail was informed on the night of December 7 that FBI agents would show up the next morning to interview Mr. Biden. 

“I felt it was people that did not need to know about our intent,” the agent said in the interview. “I believe that the Secret Service had to be notified for our safety, for lack of confusion, for deconfliction, which we would do in so many other cases, but I didn’t understand why the initial notification.”

As FBI and IRS officials were preparing to go to Mr. Biden’s home for the interview, the agent was allegedly told by his superior to not approach the first son. Instead, the agent’s contact information would be given to the Secret Service, who would then find a time that worked for Mr. Biden to conduct the interview. The call from Mr. Biden and his protective detail never came, and the FBI agent returned to the East Coast without having spoken to Mr. Biden. No interview was ever conducted. 

Mr. Shapley came forward earlier this year along with his colleague, Joseph Ziegler. Both men sat for public testimony before the Oversight Committee in June, where they detailed so-called preferential treatment that was afforded to Mr. Biden.