Special Counsel Appointed for Hunter Biden
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Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware as special counsel in the ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s tax case, a move that appeared aimed at rebutting Republican criticism that the process had been politicized.
Garland made the surprise announcement during a midday news conference at Justice Department headquarters in Washington. The appointment of Weiss, an appointee of former president Donald Trump who began the investigation of President Biden’s son in 2018 and has continued to lead the prosecution under Garland, would give him broad new authority and, presumably, distance the attorney general from some key decisions in the case.
Justice officials said Weiss requested to be named as special counsel on Tuesday, and Garland agreed.“Mr. Weiss advised me that in his judgment, his investigation has reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel,” Garland said in a statement. Given the “extraordinary circumstances” of the case, Garland said, “I have concluded it is in the public interest.”
The unexpected announcement Friday is the latest twist in Hunter Biden’s years-long legal saga. The president’s son had reached a tentative agreement with federal prosecutors in June to plead guilty to two minor tax crimes and admit to the facts of a gun charge under terms that would probably have kept him out of jail.
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The Fix is in.
“Cry havoc and let slip the DOGE of war!”
Those who cheered as J-6 American prisoners were locked in solitary for 18 months without trial, now suddenly fight tooth and nail for foreign terrorists’ "due process". — Buck Sexton
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@Jolly said in Special Counsel Appointed for Hunter Biden:
The Fix is in.
At least he won't have to testify, amirite?
"Now look here, you Baltic gas passer... " - Mik, 6/14/08
The saying, "Lite is just one damn thing after another," is a gross understatement. The damn things overlap.
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McCarthy...
I have to assume that the attorney general is finally about to do what Justice Department regs called for him to do the moment he was confirmed two and a half years ago: appoint a special counsel for what the Justice Department brands the “Hunter Biden” case. We shall see. If I’m right, look for three things:
First, is the appointee a former prosecutor from outside the government (as the regs require) who has a reputation for non-partisan scrupulousness and rigor in enforcing the law?
Second, is the appointee a new broom that sweeps clean? That is, will the special counsel bring in a new staff to take a fresh look at the Biden scandal, or will he or she just be a figurehead who creates the illusion of detachment from Biden Justice Department supervision but actually retains the same Biden Justice Department lawyers? (As I noted earlier in the week, the Mar-a-Lago documents case is still being run by Jay Bratt, the same Biden Justice Department official who investigated it prior to the special-counsel appointment of Jack Smith.)
Third, will the special counsel be given a sweeping mandate to investigate and prosecute any and all crimes uncovered in an inquiry into the Biden family influence-peddling business (much like Garland gave Jack Smith a sweeping mandate to investigate Donald Trump for document-retention crimes, post-2020-election crimes, and any other crimes discovered during the probe)? Or will Garland draw a narrow remit that limits the special counsel to Hunter Biden’s tax and gun crimes?
So, the USA who offered the deal to Hunter is now in charge of the investigation.
Got it.
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@Jolly said in Special Counsel Appointed for Hunter Biden:
The Fix is in.
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans complained that they hadn’t appointed him special counsel.
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@Jolly said in Special Counsel Appointed for Hunter Biden:
The Fix is in.
I’m old enough to remember when Republicans complained that they hadn’t appointed him special counsel.
@jon-nyc said in Special Counsel Appointed for Hunter Biden:
Republicans complained that they hadn’t appointed him special counsel
I missed that. I heard cries for A special counsel, not for Weiss to be named as one. Perhaps you're interpreting the cries for him to expand his scope of investigation as wanting him to be special counsel.
Are they the same?
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28 CFR § 600.3 - Qualifications of the Special Counsel.
(a) An individual named as Special Counsel shall be a lawyer with a reputation for integrity and impartial decisionmaking, and with appropriate experience to ensure both that the investigation will be conducted ably, expeditiously and thoroughly, and that investigative and prosecutorial decisions will be supported by an informed understanding of the criminal law and Department of Justice policies. The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government. Special Counsels shall agree that their responsibilities as Special Counsel shall take first precedence in their professional lives, and that it may be necessary to devote their full time to the investigation, depending on its complexity and the stage of the investigation.
(b) The Attorney General shall consult with the Assistant Attorney General for Administration to ensure an appropriate method of appointment, and to ensure that a Special Counsel undergoes an appropriate background investigation and a detailed review of ethics and conflicts of interest issues. A Special Counsel shall be appointed as a “confidential employee” as defined in 5 U.S.C. 7511(b)(2)(C).
"SHALL be selected from outside the United States Government."
Doesn't this disqualify Weiss?
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@Jolly said in Special Counsel Appointed for Hunter Biden:
The Fix is in.
At least he won't have to testify, amirite?
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McCarthy
But under the regulations that Garland purports to be applying, what makes a special counsel special is that he or she is a lawyer brought in from outside the government, not just outside the Justice Department. As Section 600.3 of the regulations states without ambiguity, “the Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government.” The point of the exercise is to bring in a scrupulous, experienced former prosecutor who does not work for the incumbent administration, because there is a connection between the president and the investigation that creates a profound conflict of interest for the Justice Department.
Weiss is the vehicle by which the Biden Justice Department intends to maintain tight control over the so-called Biden investigation.
It is Weiss who has already allowed the statute of limitations on any offenses arising out of the 2014–15 corruption — such as the Bidens’ dealings with Burisma — to lapse. Weiss well knew, when he was given the investigation in 2018, that the statute of limitations for the relevant tax counts was six years, and for other potential crimes it was five years. Because of the way Weiss has handled the investigation, any criminal offenses that occurred while Joe Biden was vice president are now time-barred. As I noted when the House Oversight Committee released its latest report on the $20 million-plus the Biden family raked in from agents of corrupt and anti-American governments, much of the conduct — and money — committee investigators have uncovered comes from transactions that took place prior to 2017.
It is Weiss who has never indicted Hunter Biden, even though his tax-evasion and gun crimes are straightforward and have been well known for many years. Weiss’s strategy is to resist obtaining a grand-jury indictment because such an indictment would stop the statute-of-limitations clock from lapsing on those crimes. The most outrageous revelation in the testimony of the whistleblower IRS agents who worked the Biden case was that Hunter’s defense lawyers were willing to waive any statute-of-limitations objections in the interest of getting a global plea agreement that would give him an immunity bath for all conduct from 2014 forward. It is Weiss who decided to just let the statute of limitations lapse instead.
It was Weiss who, on behalf of the Biden Justice Department, collaborated with Hunter Biden’s lawyers in the design of an indefensible plea agreement that, in violation of Justice Department standards, sought to trade away the government’s capacity to indict Hunter Biden in exchange for his admission of guilt to two misdemeanor tax offenses — in connection with which Weiss promised to recommend a sentence without jail time, in addition to the eventual dismissal of a gun felony punishable by up to ten years in prison.
It was Weiss’s prosecutors who told Judge Maryellen Noreika that they were running an “ongoing investigation” in which Hunter Biden could still be charged. Hunter’s lawyers objected that he had been promised immunity, which is what blew up the plea bargain. And we know Hunter’s lawyers were telling the truth about the terms: No prosecutor who had a serious political-corruption investigation on his hands would, in the midst of that supposedly “ongoing investigation,” gift one of its main subjects a plea to two misdemeanor tax charges.
It was Weiss who agreed to a factual recitation in Hunter’s plea proceeding that stated that the millions of dollars Hunter took in came from his legitimate work as a high-end lawyer and consultant, and that Hunter failed to pay his taxes because he was drug-addled. This would never conceivably be agreed to by a prosecutor who was running an “ongoing investigation” that indicated that the millions of dollars actually came from bribery and influence-peddling, and that Hunter didn’t pay his taxes as part of an overarching strategy by which the Bidens tried to hide the sources and amounts of the money transfers.
And why “special counsel”? Because unlike normal Justice Department prosecutors, special counsels get to write a final report. Weiss’s appointment is designed to allow him to write a report that says President Biden had no involvement in the yearslong Biden-family influence-peddling scheme of profiting from his power — a scheme that that could not have gone on for two days if the now-president had honored his public trust, followed government ethics rules, and told his family to knock it off.
Joe Biden never did that because he is the business. Garland has now branded Weiss a special counsel to persist in his thus far very effective job of burying that fact.
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@Jolly said in Special Counsel Appointed for Hunter Biden:
The Fix is in.
LOL. When you've got Jake Tapper saying, "I have questions."
He also mentions the disconnect between what Weiss said about authority and what the whistleblowers claimed. At least, Weiss won't have to testify, right?
TAPPER: Laura, are you surprised that there’s now a special counsel five years into this investigation after a plea deal had almost been agreed upon?
LAURA COATES: I mean, that plea deal was within the reach of, of course, Hunter Biden. I’m sure he’s lamenting right now whatever fiasco actually occurred in that courtroom to not have all the I’s dotted, all the T’s crossed to have this all go through.
Remember we heard already from David Weiss about what the process was like. He had said I have the authority to do so, all the talking points are contrary to my experience was. But now, this raised a lot of questions, and whatever happened on Tuesday, as Paula alluding, now does make me feel surprised about why now? What is happening here?
Remember, he’s still the U.S. attorney in Delaware, but now the special counsel allows him to go beyond his jurisdiction. You can look at other areas as well. It’s the reason why you have Jack Smith and go beyond that. You can have things in Florida and have things in Washington, D.C. It does now go beyond that.
But at its core, I wonder what the decision really came down to. The special counsel statute says you can have this if you first look at the crowd. Does a matter actually warrant an investigation? Is it warranted? He had concluded it did if you were Garland.
Was there a conflict of interest at play here? The talking point you see on the right and left suggest talking points around this very notion, that there is a conflict of being able to have the president appoint the attorney general who would oversee an investigation —
TAPPER: Into his own son, yeah.
COATES: — as you said, his son.
But finally, it’s the idea of what are you going to do about it now, and is there a way you can structure an investigation that is in the interest of the public to have the information? Garland says all three criteria are met, and so, whatever took place between the clear agreement, and now is anyone’s guess.
TAPPER: So, Paula, help me out here. David Weiss, the U.S. attorney, now special counsel had previously said in writing that he had all the power he needed. He didn’t need anymore authority. If he wanted today do charges in D.C., he could reach out to the U.S. attorney in D.C. If he wanted to do charges in L.A., he could reach out.
But now he has special counsel powers that give him that authority in writing in between we should note there were whistleblowers saying behind the scenes, David Weiss was complaining I don’t have the authority to charge in this city or that state. And the Justice Department saying, no, no, no these whistleblowers are wrong. It looks as though maybe the whistleblowers are right.
REID: It’s messy, right? It appears as if here they’re trying to insulate at the Justice Department, particularly the attorney general from what appears to be a case headed to a likely trial of the president’s son. And I think they’re hoping that this special counsel designation will also insulate them from potential congressional testimony. There were calls for Weiss to go on the hill, but now they can say, well, the Special Counsel Durham, Special Counsel Mueller, they testified after they submitted their report.
And there’s a lot of emphasis today at the Justice Department on this report and how that will offer some transparency here and that maybe fair in some respects, but that is not going to satisfy Republicans who have a lot of questions about the investigation if that report and special counsel designation are now going to be used to prevent him from going to the Hill.
TAPPER: Yeah, it’s not just Republicans who have questions. I have questions. I’m sure you guys have questions.
REID: I have so many questions. And I’m not getting all my answers.
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From the RWEC: Special Counsel Even Toadier Than First Thought.
From the LWEC: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/19/us/politics/inside-hunter-biden-plea-deal.html
Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.
Now, the I.R.S. agents and their Republican allies say they believe the evidence they brought forward, at the precise time they did, played a role in influencing the outcome, a claim senior law enforcement officials dispute.
In other words, until the whistleblowers made their allegations, Weiss was going to sweep this all under the rug.
"Special Counsel?" More like "Special Fixer."
