The reports that Attorney General Garland is allegedly slow walking the investigation into Hunter Biden brings into focus the pressures faced by America’s top cop when it comes to supervising the criminal investigation of the deeply troubled first son. For the longtime judge, it is a political baptism by fire.  

Mr. Garland, once so close to joining the Supreme Court, is not on the bench anymore. The impeccably credentialed jurist holds not a lifetime appointment but a political one, and bears statutory responsibility for the inquiry into his boss’s son, though Mr. Biden pere holds final constitutional authority over all members of the executive branch.  

The attorney general has sought to distance himself from the investigation into the younger Mr. Biden. The probe into allegations of tax evasion and lying about drug abuse to buy a gun is ostensibly in the hands of the United States attorney who operates out of Delaware and who was appointed by President Trump, David Weiss. 

In March, Mr. Garland assured lawmakers in Congress that “there will not be interference of any political or improper kind” in Mr. Weiss’s investigation. During that testimony, Mr. Garland added that he is “committed to the independence of the justice department from any influence from the White House in criminal matters.” 

Those comments were not made off the cuff, but in front of Congress and under oath, giving them the force of sworn testimony. Lying to lawmakers in that setting, or obstructing their work, is a crime that the DOJ has not been shy about prosecuting. One of Mr. Trump’s senior political Svengalis, Roger Stone, was in 2019 convicted of lying to Congress, tampering with a witness, and obstruction. Mr. Trump later pardoned him.

Now, a once-unthinkable prospect has clicked into focus: That the man who leads the department has run afoul of a federal statute that his lawyers — more than 9,200 of them, comprising the world’s largest law firm —  are tasked with enforcing.   

Those worries for Mr. Garland are traceable to an anonymous whistleblower embedded in the Internal Revenue Service who claims that Mr. Garland has not been quite so hands-off as all of that. Instead, the still reticent whistleblower claims, Mr. Garland’s fingerprints are all over Hunter Biden’s case.   

The source’s attorney, Mark Lytle, describes his client as a “career IRS criminal supervisory special agent who has been overseeing the ongoing and sensitive investigation of a high profile, controversial subject since early 2020.” 

Mr. Lytle adds in a letter to Congress obtained by the Associated Press that his client has information that would “contradict sworn testimony to Congress by a senior political appointee.” The New York Post reports that the appointee is none other than Mr. Garland. 

The whistleblower alleges “examples of preferential treatment and politics improperly infecting decisions and protocols that would normally be followed by career law enforcement professionals in similar circumstances if the subject were not politically connected.” Mr. Lytle alleges he has proof of a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition” of Hunter Biden’s case.

In response, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, would only say, “The president respects the rule of law and the independence of the Department of Justice.” Mr. Lytle told CBS News that his client “wants to come forward to Congress” with the “proper legal protections.”

Should he testify, the whistleblower will likely have the rapt attention of at least the Republican members of the House Oversight Committee, who have been conducting their own deep dive into Hunter Biden’s doings. 

In addition to the matter of Mr. Biden’s taxes and firearms purchase, Representative James Comer, chairman of that committee, this week intimated that at least nine members of the Biden clan (including Hunter and Hunter’s sister-in-law and ex-girlfriend, Hallie Biden) are under investigation for receiving money from an energy company backed by the Chinese Communist Party.