Senate advances nominee for top watchdog post despite Hunter Biden and Burisma ties

The Senate Homeland Security Committee voted Wednesday to advance President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsel amid GOP concerns over the person’s connections to Hunter Biden.

The committee voted 6-4 to advance Hampton Dellinger’s nomination to serve as OSC’s special counsel, with several members absent from the vote. All Democrats in attendance voted in favor of Dellinger’s nomination, while every present Republican voted against it.

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Dellinger is a longtime Boies Schiller Flexner attorney whose team took on Burisma, the Ukrainian energy company that Hunter Biden served on the board of, as a client at the latter’s request in 2014.

President Biden nominated Dellinger to the OSC job in October, more than two years after selecting him to serve as assistant attorney general leading the Office of Legal Policy. The independent Office of Special Counsel investigates whistleblower complaints, among other duties, and is different from the Justice Department-designated special counsel investigating Hunter Biden’s business.

Emails from Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop showed that Dellinger enjoyed a close relationship with his colleagues who worked on the Burisma account, attending a dinner with them and Hunter Biden in March 2014 and a lunch with Hunter Biden in February 2014.

“I’m really concerned about it,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who serves on the committee, told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. “I also thought he did a lousy job at the Office of Legal Policy, which is a really important office in DOJ that he’s been at for almost two years.”

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A group of Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which does not have jurisdiction over Dellinger’s OSC nomination, wrote to the president late last month urging him to withdraw Dellinger’s nomination to lead such a key government office.

“It is important to note that Mr. Dellinger, as Special Counsel, would be charged with ensuring retaliation against whistleblowers — including the IRS whistleblowers in the Hunter Biden matter — is investigated,” wrote the lawmakers, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Cornyn (R-TX), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Tom Cotton (R-AR).

Sarah Bedford contributed to this report.