House, DOJ lawyers detail cost of subpoena litigation

WASHINGTON — Attorneys for the House and the Justice Department told a federal judge Monday that a monthslong subpoena fight has so far taken up hundreds of attorney hours at an approximate cost of more than $443,000.

The declarations were filed in response to an order from Judge Ana Reyes of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who earlier this year implied the lawsuit was not a good use of taxpayer dollars and argued that taxpayers did not want to pay for a “grudge match” between the executive and legislative branches.

The filings offered a peek into the resources that the House and Justice Department have spent litigating the House Judiciary Committee’s lawsuit, which seeks to compel two Justice Department attorneys to testify about the criminal case against Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

The committee subpoenaed the two officials for depositions, but the Justice Department directed the attorneys to defy the subpoenas because agency counsel would not be allowed to attend under House rules, according to the lawsuit. The case is still at an early stage.

House General Counsel Matthew Berry estimated in a declaration that his office spent 485 attorney hours to date litigating the case, with an equivalent cost estimate of $339,850.

Berry told the judge that the cost estimate to the House for future work in the case, to pursue it at the district court and through an appeal, would be approaching $300,000.

Berry characterized the time estimates as “rough approximations” and said Office of General Counsel attorneys do not have established hourly rates “because they are salaried employees who do not bill clients.”

“This litigation has not had any impact on the number of attorneys employed by the Office of General Counsel and has therefore not increased the Office’s personnel expenses,” Berry wrote.

On the other side, Elizabeth J. Shapiro, a Justice Department official who is assigned to supervise the case, wrote in a declaration that there’s been approximately 445 attorney hours spent litigating the case, an effort that would be the equivalent of about $103,382.

Shapiro told the judge that the cost estimate to the DOJ for future work in the case through an appeal would be approaching $100,000.

In arriving at the figures, Shapiro said she considered the time of each trial team member, along with appellate attorneys who would be assigned to litigate any appeal. She also said she used her billing rate, which is higher compared to most of the DOJ attorneys on the case.

It remains unclear how Reyes, the federal judge overseeing the case, will react to the figures. But she has criticized the case in the past.

During a status conference on the case earlier this year, she ordered both sides to meet to try to come to an agreement and railed against arguments from the Justice Department and House general counsel’s office, telling them this is a “bad, bad case” for both sides.

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