Whistleblower
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Shapley, the whistleblower gave a long interview last night.
Not much new. He reiterated how, at multiple times, evidence of more serious wrongdoing was stifled and investigations were hindered by prosecutors.
Of note:
He took notes at the time of his meeting and emailed them to himself to serve as a record of his recollections. So, it's not "yeah, I remember this happened about 5 years ago." Rather, it's "This is important. As soon as I get home, I'm going to write it down and email myself the memo."
He acknowledges Weiss's statements that he (Weiss) had full authority. Nevertheless, he says that Weiss said something quite different at the time (as noted in the email).
Finally, there are six wintesses, all telling the same story about Weiss saying that he doesn't have authority.
Link to video
Link to video -
Maybe they will make President Biden and President Trump cell mates. 555
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Maybe they will make President Biden and President Trump cell mates. 555
@taiwan_girl said in Whistleblower:
Maybe they will make President Biden and President Trump cell mates. 555
Wouldn't that make a hell of a sitcom?
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Weiss responds to Graham: Never requested special counsel status, never denied the ability to make any charges in any district.
https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000189-403e-d0a8-a59b-dffe47490000
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As you said, someone's lying.
Shapley said it under oath. Weiss wrote it in a letter. Get Weiss under oath.
Mr. Weiss says he never requested a special-counsel designation, but that he did have “discussions with Departmental officials” about a “potential appointment” as a special attorney.
The latter would have let him “file charges in a district outside my own without the partnership of the local U.S. Attorney.” He says “I was assured that I would be granted this authority if it proved necessary.” This conveniently gels with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s claim that Mr. Weiss never asked for special-counsel status but could have filed charges anywhere.
Yet those claims conflict with the testimony of IRS investigator Gary Shapley. The tax specialist says a team of IRS, FBI and DOJ officials last year were ready to charge Hunter with felony tax offenses in Washington, D.C., and California, but that Mr. Weiss told them in an October meeting that he’d been denied “special counsel authority from Main DOJ” and that he wasn’t “the deciding official on whether charges are filed.” Mr. Weiss last month settled the tax case in Delaware in a deal that will likely let Hunter escape jail time.
Mr. Weiss’s letter doesn’t say if that’s what he told Mr. Shapley and the others in October. It also doesn’t answer whether U.S. Attorneys appointed by President Biden blocked Mr. Weiss from filing charges against Hunter in their D.C. and California districts. That’s Mr. Shapley’s claim, and the New York Times reports that it has confirmed the California story.
That undermines Mr. Garland’s claim that the probe was free of political interference. If Mr. Weiss did have the freedom to ask for special-attorney privileges, why didn’t he pursue the charges that his team spent years investigating and recommended?
In his letter Mr. Weiss again refused to discuss anything further about his “ongoing investigation.” But if he’s settled the case, why is it “ongoing”? Congress is right to demand that Mr. Weiss answer its questions.
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As you said, someone's lying.
Shapley said it under oath. Weiss wrote it in a letter. Get Weiss under oath.
Mr. Weiss says he never requested a special-counsel designation, but that he did have “discussions with Departmental officials” about a “potential appointment” as a special attorney.
The latter would have let him “file charges in a district outside my own without the partnership of the local U.S. Attorney.” He says “I was assured that I would be granted this authority if it proved necessary.” This conveniently gels with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s claim that Mr. Weiss never asked for special-counsel status but could have filed charges anywhere.
Yet those claims conflict with the testimony of IRS investigator Gary Shapley. The tax specialist says a team of IRS, FBI and DOJ officials last year were ready to charge Hunter with felony tax offenses in Washington, D.C., and California, but that Mr. Weiss told them in an October meeting that he’d been denied “special counsel authority from Main DOJ” and that he wasn’t “the deciding official on whether charges are filed.” Mr. Weiss last month settled the tax case in Delaware in a deal that will likely let Hunter escape jail time.
Mr. Weiss’s letter doesn’t say if that’s what he told Mr. Shapley and the others in October. It also doesn’t answer whether U.S. Attorneys appointed by President Biden blocked Mr. Weiss from filing charges against Hunter in their D.C. and California districts. That’s Mr. Shapley’s claim, and the New York Times reports that it has confirmed the California story.
That undermines Mr. Garland’s claim that the probe was free of political interference. If Mr. Weiss did have the freedom to ask for special-attorney privileges, why didn’t he pursue the charges that his team spent years investigating and recommended?
In his letter Mr. Weiss again refused to discuss anything further about his “ongoing investigation.” But if he’s settled the case, why is it “ongoing”? Congress is right to demand that Mr. Weiss answer its questions.
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Think about the nonsensical construct Garland has built around the public question of Who sabotaged the Hunter Biden prosecution? That is, who dragged it out for years, willfully undermining the investigators’ ability to investigate even as we were told that the “ongoing investigation” necessitated resisting any congressional inquiries? Who pulled that off for so long that the statute of limitations lapsed on some of the most revelatory corruption charges? Who choreographed the inevitable sweetheart plea deal?
That wasn’t Weiss. It was Garland.
Garland says that Weiss needed only to ask, and he would have been given limitless special-counsel authority to charge the case as he saw fit. As a result, the feeding frenzy is now focused on (a) whether Weiss really faced resistance from Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in Washington, D.C., and California over the prospect of indicting Hunter, and (b) whether Weiss formally asked Garland for special-counsel status while he was telling the agents that his hands were tied by the Biden Justice Department.
That’s how Garland wants us to evaluate the matter. And it’s preposterous.
Have a look at https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/28/part-600 — they’re short and fairly straightforward. The first thing you may notice, in light of the present circumstances, is that there is no procedure calling for a district U.S. attorney to seek special-counsel status. To the contrary, the rules explicitly provide that a “Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government” (see § 600.3, emphasis added). If the special-counsel rules were followed — and Garland claims to be a stickler for DOJ rules — a request by Weiss to be appointed as a special counsel would have required his resignation from his plum position inside the United States Government.
But that doesn’t begin to capture Garland’s sleight of hand.
The main reason there is no procedure for a U.S. attorney to request special-counsel status is that the rules commit the decision of whether to appoint a special counsel to the attorney general and require that the decision be based on the attorney general’s own determination of two specific questions (see § 600.1). Not surprisingly, those questions are virtually the antithesis of the nonsensical question Garland would like us to think is dispositive — namely, whether a U.S. attorney (who answers to Garland) was blocked from filing charges by two other U.S. attorneys (who answer to Garland).
Instead the two questions laid out in the rules are commonsense ones, which any ethical attorney general would consider if an investigation or prosecution of a sensitive matter were warranted, to wit: (1) Would the investigation or prosecution of the person involved “present a conflict of interest for the Department [of Justice],” and (2) would it be “in the public interest to appoint an outside Special Counsel to assume responsibility for the matter”? (Emphasis added.)
If there is a viable basis for a criminal investigation or prosecution, it is the attorney general’s obligation to appoint a special counsel, not on request by a Justice Department prosecutor, but if the answers to those two questions are “yes.” That is, a special counsel should be named if a serious conflict of interest vitiates the Justice Department’s capacity to handle the case in the normal manner, and the case is sufficiently important that the public interest supports bringing in a prosecutor from outside the government.
There is no clearer textbook example of such a conflict of interest than when the president’s Justice Department is in the position of having to investigate the president himself or a member of the president’s close family. Here, the Biden Justice Department is in the position of investigating and prosecuting the president’s son for financial crimes, in which the president appears to be implicated, and for a gun crime that is complicated by the president’s incessant rhetoric about ratcheting up federal gun regulations.
It could not conceivably be more obvious that the attorney general was obligated to appoint a special counsel from outside the government the moment he learned about the Biden case and the gargantuan conflict of interest it entails. It was up to Garland to do that, not up to Weiss to ask him to do that. Lawyers do not get to delegate their ethics to subordinates.
Since the need for a special counsel could not be any clearer, the only sensible inference to be drawn is that Garland’s refusal to appoint one meant that he and the president did not want the investigation and prosecution of the Biden case to be pursued. They banked on the regnant double standard under which Republican administrations are subjected to intense media pressure to appoint special counsels even in the absence of evidence of a crime, whereas the press makes nary a peep about a Democratic administration that refuses to appoint a special counsel in the face of a patent conflict.
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Different whistleblower
"Gal Luft, a dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, is accused of recruiting and paying a former high-ranking U.S. government official – and adviser to then President-elect Donald Trump – on behalf of principals based in China in 2016 without registering in the U.S. as a foreign agent as federal law requires.
The 57-year-old fugitive has become a key figure in Republican-led corruption investigations into President Joe Biden, accusing him, his son Hunter Biden and other family members of having improper financial arrangements with the China-controlled energy company CEFC."
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That brings us to the central deceit.
While Garland would have you believe Weiss would have been granted any necessary authority if only he’d asked, it was not Weiss’ job to ask. Rather, it was Garland’s duty to appoint a special counsel, regardless of whether a subordinate asked him to do so.
Under the regulations, a special counsel must be brought in from outside the government.
By definition, if Weiss had asked to be appointed a special counsel, he would effectively have been resigning his coveted position as US attorney for Delaware. Why would Garland have expected Weiss to ask for Garland to fire him?
More to the point, there is no provision in the regs for the AG to appoint a special counsel on request by a district US attorney.
Rather, the regs require the AG to name a special counsel if the AG is aware of a conflict of interest that prevents the Justice Department from investigating and prosecuting a case in the normal course.
There can be no greater conflict of interest than that posed by the president’s Justice Department’s having to investigate the president himself and/or a close family member of the president.
It is the textbook case for a special counsel.
The Biden Justice Department could not credibly investigate the Biden family. Garland knows that, yet he refused to appoint a special counsel.
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Different whistleblower
"Gal Luft, a dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, is accused of recruiting and paying a former high-ranking U.S. government official – and adviser to then President-elect Donald Trump – on behalf of principals based in China in 2016 without registering in the U.S. as a foreign agent as federal law requires.
The 57-year-old fugitive has become a key figure in Republican-led corruption investigations into President Joe Biden, accusing him, his son Hunter Biden and other family members of having improper financial arrangements with the China-controlled energy company CEFC."
@taiwan_girl said in Whistleblower:
on behalf of principals based in China in 2016 without registering in the U.S. as a foreign agent as federal law requires.
Guess who else worked for the same company (CEFC China Energy) and didn't register as a foreign agent?
