Garland’s Special-Counsel Appointment in the Biden Probe Is a Farce
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of the Biden Justice Department’s Delaware U.S. attorney, David Weiss, as a special counsel is a joke.
To begin with, Weiss is not eligible to be a special counsel under the special-counsel regulations . To be clear, the attorney general has all the authority he needs to assign Weiss to the case (and, indeed, Weiss has been assigned to it throughout Garland’s tenure). 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. There could not be a more serious, blatant conflict of interest than a situation in which the president’s Justice Department is conducting an investigation of the president’s son that implicates the president in potentially impeachable conduct.
Of course, if he were to deign to answer questions (as he declined to do today), Garland would point out that that last of the regulations, Section 600.10 , makes clear that no one can sue him for refusing to follow the regulations. And that’s right: This is all theater. He is pretending to follow regulations while not following them, hoping you don’t notice but aware that even if you do notice there’s nothing you can do about it. Got that?
Weiss is an official of the government and the Biden Justice Department. In his statement this afternoon, Garland confirmed not only that Weiss had been asked in February 2021 to stay on with the Biden Justice Department, but that — notwithstanding today’s farcical appointment — Weiss will be continuing on as the Biden Justice Department’s top prosecutor in Delaware.
That is to say: Weiss is the vehicle by which the Biden Justice Department intends to maintain tight control over the so-called Biden investigation.
No surprise there. Weiss has all along compliantly acted as the vehicle by which the Biden Justice Department protects the president, and thus the president’s son, from a credible 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’s subordinates who instructed agents to avoid asking witnesses questions about “the big guy” and “dad,” in order to ensure the investigation didn’t incriminate the president. It was Weiss’s subordinates who tipped off Hunter Biden’s lawyers that Hunter had transferred relevant documents to a storage locker for which Weiss knew the IRS agents were planning to seek a search warrant, thus frustrating the investigators’ ability to seize key evidence.
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.
I could go on, but the bottom line is that Weiss is not eligible under the regulations to be a special counsel. He has been abra-cadabra stamped as one so he can continue killing the “ongoing investigation” he is running.
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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Just so everyone's clear what Weiss's role is, if the admittedly unprecedented plea bargain the Judge blew up wasn't clear enough. The guy who purposely let a statute of limitations expire to protect Hunter Biden gets to keep protecting him and avoid oversight by the House.
It's not subtle. Just the raw exercise of power to protect the President's family.
funny how your article failed to mention this part...
Irrelevant deflection.
What does that matter? His performance speaks for itself.
Funny how you didn't mention this:
In addition, we can only assume that he has steered the case away from Joe Biden during all this time.
Now we have Merrick Garland, who continues to prove that he is bias and corrupt. Didn't Garland tell us that he had already given Weiss Special Counsel powers? Of course, that would have required a written citation and there was none. So, we have Garland appointing the man who perpetrated such corruption and in doing so violates the spirit of the Special Counsel rule which means appointing someone not only outside of the Justice Department, but completely outside of government.
Then there is the matter of the written mandate Weiss was given. It should have contained the words follow the evidence wherever it leads. The mandate Garland produced could easily be interpreted to mean: limited to Hunter Biden.
This will be another faux investigation.
"There could not be a more serious, blatant conflict of interest than a situation in which the president’s Justice Department is conducting an investigation of the president’s son that implicates the president in potentially impeachable conduct."
And Garland just ignored the regulation calling for the special prosecutor to be from outside the government. Amazing.
Let us give eternal thanks that this bozo Garland never made it to the Supreme Court. I expect this clownish shit show will proceed forthwith into the higher Courts. But in the meantime, serious thoughts should be given to impeaching this immoral asshole.
No kidding. He constantly justifies the Republicans rejection of him.
Garland is not even trying to hide his biases anymore.
Amazing!