President Joe Biden has announced his nomination of a former colleague of his son to a prosecutorial position.
President Biden said Oct. 3 he was tapping Hampton Dellinger to head the Office of Special Counsel, which has investigative and prosecutorial powers.
Mr. Dellinger worked in the U.S. Department of Justice until June, where he “played a key coordinating role in the department’s implementation of the president’s Executive Order on Advancing Effective, Accountable Policing and Criminal Justice Practices as well as the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act,” the White House said. “In addition, Dellinger worked to enhance the reliability of forensic science in investigations and prosecutions.”
Before serving in the federal government, Mr. Dellinger worked in the North Carolina Department of Justice and for North Carolina’s governor. Prior these roles, he worked for the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner, according to his LinkedIn profile and emails from Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Boies Schiller Flexner is the same law firm where Mr. Biden worked.
Mr. Dellinger and the White House did not respond to requests for comment.
“The first word that comes to mind is ‘brazen.’ In the current climate where many Americans are concerned about the politicization of the government, law enforcement, and justice, this move looks to be a pretty firm thumb in the eye of the American public,” Michael Chamberlain, director of the watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust, told The Epoch Times via email.
Pete McGinnis, communications director for the Functional Government Initiative, said he’s sure Mr. Dellinger is qualified, but that there are plenty of qualified attorneys in Washington who could have filled the post.
“Normally, no one would even remark on who joins the Special Counsel’s office,” Mr. McGinnis told The Epoch Times in an email. “To pick a former colleague of the president’s legally troubled son shows an amazing lack of self-awareness.”
If approved by the Senate, Mr. Dellinger would replace Henry Kerner, the current head of the Office of Special Counsel.
The office is an independent agency in the executive branch.
Worked Together
Mr. Dellinger worked for Boies Schiller Flexner from May 2013 to November 2020. Mr. Biden worked at the law firm from 2009 to 2014, when he joined Ukrainian-based Burisma Holdings.“Hunter, great to see you last week,” Mr. Dellinger wrote on Feb. 5, 2014.
Mr. Biden replied and said he would be in the office the following day.
“I will be here tomorrow and be great to catch up,” Mr. Dellinger responded.
Mr. Biden was also invited to a small dinner in March 2014 held by William Isaacson, another partner at the firm, other emails from the computer show.
The dinner was rescheduled due to snow, on a date that worked for Mr. Biden and his wife at the time, Mr. Isaacson said in a group email that included Mr. Dellinger.
The following day, another partner who was invited to the dinner, Heather King, wrote to him saying, “Are you available to meet during the day on March 27th at the office?”
She added, “That is the one date that works this month for everyone else who focuses on the crisis management and government response work.”
Mr. Dellinger was part of the team at the law firm that focused on crisis management.
Additional emails from 2014 showed Mr. Biden in discussions with Michael Gottlieb, yet another partner at the firm, on bringing on Burisma as a client.
“I think Burisma is prepared for an engagement fee in the 100K range as their initial needs would most likely be limited to Crisis/ Gov’t team,” Mr. Biden wrote in one email on April 18, 2014.
Mr. Biden also told Mr. Gottlieb and Mr. Isaacson that he had advised Burisma to hire Boies Schiller Flexner. He said he had been telling Burisma to “think strategically about the current crisis and expansion of their existing domestic operations.”
Against Trump
At the July 2021 confirmation hearing for Mr. Dellinger’s promotion to assistant attorney general in the Office of Legal Policy, Republican lawmakers brought up several past remarks and social media posts showing Mr. Dellinger’s bias against President Trump and conservatives in general.In a January 2020 Twitter post, Mr. Dellinger expressed animus against President Trump.
“I knew Trump becoming POTUS would confirm his unfitness for office,” Mr. Dellinger wrote at the time.
In another post, he claimed former President Barack Obama “enjoyed democratic legitimacy that Trump (popular vote loser, impeached, down in polls) could only dream of.”
In another post, he wondered, “Has there ever been an American who posed a greater national security risk to America than Donald Trump?”
In written responses to the senators’ questions about his posts, Mr. Dellinger said he had the ability “to work effectively with career professionals as well as appointed and elected leaders regardless of party.”
He also said, “I recognize that whichever candidate assembles 270 electoral votes is a constitutionally legitimate president.”
Mr. Dellinger has also attacked Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, writing while in law school that “using the word ‘justice’ with regard to Clarence Thomas was an oxymoron and that his decisions would never have any legitimacy,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) said in a question to Mr. Dellinger during the confirmation hearing.
Mr. Dellinger told senators before they confirmed him to the position that his views have changed in the decades since he was in school, and that he now views Justice Thomas as legitimate. The confirmation vote ended up being 51–45, with three Republicans joining the Democrats in favor of the confirmation.
“Dellinger’s partisan past casts doubt on his capacity to serve in what should be a strictly nonpartisan, independent role,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), who voted against Mr. Dellinger’s appointment in 2021, told The Epoch Times via email.
“I’ve called on the Office of the Special Counsel to aggressively investigate retaliation against courageous IRS whistleblowers who exposed significant government misconduct in the Hunter Biden investigation,” Mr. Grassley added. “Questions remain as to whether Dellinger would be up for the job of supporting all whistleblowers, or whether he, like so many other Biden appointees, would run to Hunter Biden’s rescue instead.”
