The legal team defending Hunter Biden from felony gun charges has asked a federal judge to issue subpoenas for President Trump and three of his former top Department of Justice officials who were part of the administration when the federal investigation into Mr. Biden began in 2018. 

A wide-ranging investigation into Mr. Biden fils, his taxes, and his foreign business dealings was conducted, in part, at the office of the United States attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania. Mr. Biden’s attorneys appear to be seeking evidence that the investigation — and subsequent prosecution — of Mr. Biden was politically motivated.  They want to know if Mr. Trump or the others, including Attorney General Barr, had any direct role in the pursuit of the president’s son.

“The Department of Justice under then-Attorney General Barr opened a dedicated channel at the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh to receive information about Mr. Biden coming from then-President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, and his associates,” Mr. Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, says. Mr. Lowell also asked the judge to subpoena Mr. Barr. 

Other individuals whom Mr. Lowell wishes to depose include a former deputy attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, and a former United States attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Richard Donoghue. Shortly before the end of the Trump administration, Mr. Rosen was elevated to serve as acting attorney general, and Mr. Donoghue then took his place as the acting deputy attorney general. 

“As deputy attorney general, Mr. Rosen interacted with teams investigating Mr. Biden in both Pittsburgh and Delaware,” Mr. Lowell says. “In the lead-up to the 2020 election, IRS case files show certain investigative decisions were made ‘as a result of guidance provided’ by, among others, ‘the Deputy Attorney General’s office.’” 

Mr. Lowell also says that an Internal Revenue Service whistleblower, Gary Shapley, wrote in a message to colleagues that “all aspects of the investigation” had to be vetted by Mr. Donoghue and Delaware’s U.S. attorney, David Weiss, who would later file three felony charges against Mr. Biden for lying about his drug use in order to purchase a gun. 

Mr. Lowell’s request for a subpoena seeks to learn more about Mr. Trump’s anti-Biden activities in the immediate wake of his 2020 election loss, when he was still president. According to records provided to the January 6 committee, Mr. Trump was calling DOJ officials in late 2020 to ask for a more public airing of Mr. Biden’s dirty laundry. 

Mr. Rosen wrote in a memo after a December 2020 call with the then-president that Mr. Trump asked him to “figure out what to do” with the younger Mr. Biden. Mr. Barr, in his memoir, wrote of a similar call with Mr. Trump during which the president asked him for information about the tax evasion and foreign lobbying investigation. 

“Dammit, Mr. President, I am not going to talk to you about Hunter Biden, period,” the former attorney general shouted, according to his recent memoir, “One Damn Thing After Another.”  

In his request for the subpoena of the former president, Mr. Lowell lists a number of social media posts made by Mr. Trump over the course of his presidency and since his departure. At one point, following the release of Mr. Weiss’s plea deal with the first son over the gun charges — which would collapse — Mr. Trump accused the prosecutor of handing “out a traffic ticket instead of a death sentence.”

Mr. Lowell says these social media posts could have been implicit guidance to lower tier DOJ officials to go after Mr. Biden and his family. 

“Mr. Trump has made a plethora of concerning public statements calling for an investigation or possible prosecution of Mr. Biden, both while in office and since leaving, that further suggest improper partisan, political demands were at play, either expressly or implicitly,” Mr. Lowell argues.