WASHINGTON ― The country’s top cop insisted Friday that the Delaware prosecutor who charged President Joe Biden’s son with tax crimes had the power to bring charges however he wanted.

“He was given complete authority to make all decisions on his own,” U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference.

A whistleblower previously claimed that Garland’s Justice Department slow-walked an investigation into Hunter Biden’s alleged failure to pay federal taxes.

Gary Shapley, a career IRS agent overseeing criminal investigations, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill in May that FBI officials resisted applications for warrants and that David Weiss, the Delaware U.S. attorney overseeing the Hunter Biden case, claimed he couldn’t bring charges in other states without permission from prosecutors in those states.

According to Shapley, Weiss said he was “not the deciding official on whether charges are filed” against Hunter Biden in Washington, D.C., and that he was also turned down in California.

Weiss ultimately brought tax and gun charges against Hunter Biden this week in Delaware and said the case is ongoing. The president’s son agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanors for the tax charges and to enter a pretrial diversion program to avoid a felony gun charge.

Garland maintained Friday that Weiss was, in fact, the deciding official.

“As I said at the outset, Mr. Weiss, who was appointed by President Trump as the U.S Attorney in Delaware and assigned this matter during the previous administration, would be permitted to continue his investigation and to make a decision to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to,” Garland said.

Garland noted that Weiss himself affirmed that he was in charge of his charging decisions in a letter to Republicans earlier this month.

“I don’t know how it would be possible for anybody to block him from bringing a prosecution, given that he has this authority,” Garland said, adding that Weiss never asked for special counsel powers, as Shapley claimed.

Weiss’ office declined to comment on Thursday and didn’t respond to a follow-up request on Friday.

If Shapley’s account is correct, and Weiss believed he couldn’t charge Hunter Biden outside of Delaware without permission from U.S. attorneys in those states, it would call into question Garland’s repeated statements before Congress that Weiss had free reign to handle the case however he saw fit.

Republicans have described Shapley’s testimony as more evidence of a “two-tier” justice system that persecutes Republicans and former President Donald Trump while going easy on Democrats.