(NewsNation) — A man who some GOP leaders claimed was going to help bring down the Biden family is himself wanted by authorities.
In May, Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., said a key informant for the House Oversight Committee’s investigation into the Biden family had disappeared. He said on Fox Business that House Republicans couldn’t “track down the informant.”
Now, it turns out that the previously unknown informant, Gal Luft, has been charged with acting as an unregistered agent of China, as well as seeking to broker the sale of weapons and Iranian oil.
Luft, 57, has vehemently denied the charges against him and claims it’s revenge from the Department of Justice. Luft’s attorney, Robert Henoch, spoke to NewsNation host Dan Abrams about the case.
Henoch says he and Luft met with federal prosecutors in 2019 about allegations linked to the Biden family. Henoch pointed out that the meeting predated Luft’s 2022 indictment.
“This was before President Biden announced his candidacy. We could have taken ourselves to the media, we could have gone to the Congress. We decided to go to the federal prosecutors, because my client wanted to do his duty as a good citizen and tell them what he knows,” Henoch told Abrams.
Henoch continued: “We went there apolitically, not as Republicans, not as Democrats. We went there with a report of extraordinary corruption at the highest levels.”
Henoch insists Luft told federal prosecutors “there was a mole in the Federal Bureau of Investigation that was passing information through the Bidens to the highest level members of the Chinese Communist Party in exchange for money.” He says an investigation into those claims has “never gone anywhere.”
Comer said he wants to hear more about Luft’s accusations.
“We definitely want to hear more about these allegations and we want to see the notes from the (March 2019) meeting,” Comer told media outlets. “They sent six (FBI and DOJ officials), according to Gal Luft, to Brussels to interview him. I mean, obviously they were concerned about something he had to say.”
Henoch has suggested that for his client coming to prosecutors with information in 2019, while Donald Trump was serving as president, Luft’s charges in 2022 were a form of retaliation for being a whistleblower.
“He’s a defendant in a case that was trumped up against him because he told the government things they did not want to hear,” Henoch said.
Luft was indicted in November 2022 and arrested in February in the Republic of Cyprus on an eight-count indictment for allegedly failing to register under the Foreign Acts Registration Act, arms trafficking, Iranian sanctions violations and making false statements to federal agents.
After being released on bail while extradition proceedings were pending, Luft fled and remains a fugitive, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
Though Luft has failed to show up to court, Henoch says he is willing to testify for GOP leaders if he’s subpoenaed.
Abrams pushed back on the notion: “Your client is willing to testify if subpoenaed, but he won’t show up (to court) even though he’s a criminal defendant in a case? That’s nonsensical.”
“My client is in fear for his life,” Henoch said. “My client is willing to testify if he’s called to do so.”
In connection to his charges, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Luft, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen and co-head of a Maryland think tank, engaged in multiple international criminal schemes for years.
“He subverted foreign agent registration laws in the United States to seek to promote Chinese policies by acting through a former high-ranking U.S. Government official; he acted as a broker in deals for dangerous weapons and Iranian oil; and he told multiple lies about his crimes to law enforcement,” Williams said in a news release issued last week.
White House officials have repeatedly voiced that Republican lawmakers have been unable to confirm or verify corruption allegations against the president.