David Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden for five years, ever since Donald Trump appointed him US Attorney for Delaware. Apparently he requested special counsel status on Tuesday, and today Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that he had granted it.
This is a very strange story. Last month Weiss wound up his investigation and agreed to a plea deal with Hunter. Then a Trump-appointed judge raised questions about a minor element of the deal, causing Hunter to reverse course and enter a plea of not guilty to the charges against him. For some reason this has prompted Weiss to not only continue the investigation, but to do so as a special counsel.
What's happened over the past two weeks to cause this change? As far as I know there have been no new revelations about Hunter. Is this purely political, motivated by recent Republican hollering over Weiss's independence coupled with news about Hunter's offshore accounts that's months old and has been well known to Weiss since it was made public?
There are no answers—yet. I assume Weiss will hold a press conference at some point, but I also assume he'll decline to say much. It's all very mysterious.
Why did David Weiss suddenly reopen the Hunter Biden investigation?
David Weiss is both a Republican lawyer and a Trump appointee, and there's an election next year with a Biden on the ballot.
David Weiss didn’t do this, Merrick Garland did.
Both Garland and Weiss were clear that Weiss did it.
The mysterious part is why Garland didn’t say “pound sand”.
The Republicans effed Garland and yet he continues to be cowed by them.
Strictly a guess, but I suspect Weiss was making noises about going to the press if he didn’t get his way.
I'd have been happy with Sally Yates. Instead, we got Caspar Milquetoast.
He could hardly do that when a few weeks ago he said or at least implied that should Weiss request special counsel status, he'd get it.
Because Garland has always been clear that he would give Weiss whatever Weiss wanted.
Well, certainly now Republicans will more fairly compare any crimes Hunter Biden may have committed with those of Donald Trump.
Hunter's legal challenge fall into three, broad, categories:
1. Lying on Federal form, when buying a gun, about his drug use
2. Past due taxes
3. Possible unregistered political lobbying (and potential follow on issues)
The plea bargain fell apart over item 3 above. The plea bargain did not, to Hunter's disappointment, cover number 3. Perhaps this is all politics. Or maybe there is some real legal challenges about Hunter's past work...
Note, it seems LOTS of lobbying firms come close or cross this legal line
Past due taxes are normally punished only by a fine and interest on the amount owed. Mis-reporting is a more serious offense than simply not reporting. If Hunter needs to do a couple of years at Club Fed, it's a small price to pay for Trump being shipped off to Gitmo so he is very effectively silenced.
This is a fact that the political press will not even mention, along with the fact the taxes were paid a while ago.
Foxnews recently ran a story about a baltimore police officer who was jailed for 10 months for committing the crime Hunter was charged with. What they left out ws this was the 2nd time the guy was caught doing this. The first time it was pursued civilly, except unlike Hunter, he only paid the back taxes, and refused to pay the interest and fines. Then got caught not filing for a 2nd time
The plea bargain did not fall apart because of three. If you read the plea bargain, it was clear that it offered no immunity beyond what is offered in the double jeopardy clause of the constitution. I have no idea why Hunter's lawyers were lying about that, but they were clearly lying. Also, this issue took a grand total of 5 minutes to solve during the plea hearing. What caused the plea deal to be help up ws that it required the job to supervise it and the judge said that was likely unconstitutional. It appears the prosecutors bought her claim and Hunter's lawyers are not willing to leave the evaluation of Huner's fulfillment of the deal to Trump's DOJ.
What happened in the Hunter Biden investigation is that Donald Trump got indicted again.
Whatever the reason, Rep. Comer hates, hates, hates it...
https://twitter.com/ChadPergram/status/1690047047720673285?s=20
Marcy Wheeler says this ”will make it harder for James Comer to continue holding dick pics hearings”, but doesn’t explain why.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/08/11/merrick-garland-makes-david-weiss-a-special-counsel/
Whatever the reasons, Republicans had accusations ready. They had already accused the DOJ of refusing to make Weiss a special counsel; now they are saying this is a coverup because Weiss negotiated the alleged ‘sweetheart deal’. And if Garland had named a different person as special counsel, they would have said it was because Weiss had the goods on Hunter.
Five years. I wonder what the Founders would have thought.
Ken Starr set about arbitrarily jailing people to try to force them to make up crap about Bill Clinton and wingnuts will never be happy until they cause at least that much suffering to everyone Hunter Biden has ever met.
Does this allow Weiss to stay on the case and allow Biden to appoint a USA for Delaware?
CBS News said Weiss remains US attorney for Delaware.
That doesn't make sense to me. Special counsel is for a specific case or set of cases. Why not let him continue to play Inspector Javert to Hunter Biden, but appoint an actual US Attorney for the Delaware District to handle the matters not related to the 2024 presidential election? I'm sure there are other cases in Delaware.
I hope daddy biden was smart enough to steer clear of little hunter's nonsense. Hunter is a creepy SOB and I would hate to think the future of the republic hinges on the actions of that freak. Good god.
This is the "corruption" that Republicans accuse Joe of: talking to his son on speakerphone (per the loathsome Roger Kimball at American LOLGreatness):
If Joe Biden really took those calls from Hunter, it was stupid, unethical, and gives terrible optics. It was the kind of move that lets Fox News earn a few billion dollars more this year and make MAGA supporters heads nearly spin off into space.
MAGA world lives on finding some shred of evidence that allows them to claim they located massive deep-state corruption. Biden Crime Family!! DOJ corruption and cover up!! Impeach everyone!! And on and on ...
So the ethical thing would be to refuse all calls from his troubled son on the off chance that Hunter was calling from a business meeting with questionable people?
C’mon, man.
Joe Biden should have told Hunter to never call him while in a business meetiing and tell him if he did he would simply politely hang up. Really, I think it is that simple. Hunter calling the USA VP during a business meeting with foreign clients was obviously meant to show off his political access, even if it was all BS.
Don’t think I’ll be nominating you for Dad of the Year …
According to Archer it was Joe calling Hunter. Again, according to Archer Joe called Hunter every single day. and out of those thousands of calls over 10 years, he caught Hunte socializing with business associates 20 times. Business was never discussed on these calls.
^^^ This. It would be nice if all commenters took the time to ascertain the facts before rushing to their keyboards.
For certain commenters ... would that have made a difference? I think we all know who those commenters are 😉
Thank you.
Thanks for this. I just read the actual Archer meeting transcript, and you are right. I had picked up my thinking from news stories only, and I had it quite wrong.
BTW, the point you make also explains why the MSM never made this a major news story, like Fox News and others did. It also shows that the Archer interview was not really very damaging to Joe Biden at all.
The plea bargain talks reached, in Weiss's words "an impasse". As a result of this Biden apparently decided to withdraw his waiver of venue and Weiss now needs to bring charges in either CA or DC. He needs to be a Special Counsel to do that.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F3Q5FBNXAAEL5Rv?format=jpg&name=large
IANAL.
But as I have read it explained, the judge had two problems with the plea agreement. One was that the agreement involved the judge in monitoring Hunter Biden’s compliance with the terms — the judge questioned whether this is even Constitutional; normally it’s the job of the prosecutor’s office to monitor for violations and bring charges if warranted. The other was that the prosecutors and Biden’s attorneys had very different understandings of the scope of the grant of immunity; Weiss was already intending to continue the investigation into the FARA issue and possibly other matters; the defense thought the entire investigation would be closed. Not a ‘minor element’ of disagreement, and it’s hard to imagine any defendant agreeing to plea without a final resolution.
The judge seemed to me to be acting fairly, and applying the law conscientiously. Any of you lawyers here care to weigh in?
Yes. The judge monitoring for violations was in the revised agreement that they submitted after negotiations that day. The meeting of the minds re: immunity from further charges arising out of the investigation (kind of standard in a plea agreement) was the main driver of the problems. That is why he pleaded not guilty.
Both sides seem to be heading for trial, which I expect will come reasonably quickly on the tax charges. Whether it is worth it at all to charge the gun crime is in doubt, given the 5th circuit ruling a couple of days ago.
Opiates, cocaine, etc. weren’t outlawed in the United States until the twentieth century, so by Bruen, Hunter walks.
"The meeting of the minds re: immunity from further charges arising out of the investigation (kind of standard in a plea agreement) was the main driver of the problems. " 100% false. That was resolved in 5 minutes as Biden's lawyers were simply lying. The orignal deal was in writing and that made it clear that Hunte was subject to charges on any other crime.
"The other was that the prosecutors and Biden’s attorneys had very different understandings of the scope of the grant of immunity" This took 5 minutes to resolve as it was clear Hunter's lawyers were lying. There was a written plea deal that made clear that Hunter could be charged for other crimes. And Weiss had run to the press to announce that the moment Hinter's lawyers had claimed tall matters were resovled after the deal was announced.
I looked at the transcript, and it seemed to me that they spent more than 5 minutes on it, including a brief recess for discussions, and that the government’s position was that there was a continuing investigation and that further charges related to tax issues were not off the table. Even the judge seemed to have questions.
Where do you get this? The judge certainly didn’t criticize them on this point; and as I said, apparently shared their confusion.
Not true. As US attorney he can bring indictments anywhere he must. He just needs to inform the US attorney in whatever district he is charging and give them the opportunity to join the case.
It seems likely, regardless of the final outcome, that Weiss sought the imprimatur of independence and of the Dept of Justice.
Consider that he now has the duty to write up a report to explain (indirectly to his critics) his decisions to not charge and prosecute specific criminal complaints being asserted in public.
I had the same thought -- here is Merrick Garland AGAIN taking action to "avoid the appearance of political bias," as if anyone outside his head will care. In fact, NOW if Weiss declines to prosecute for anything beyond the tax and firearm charges, trump and the GOP will SCREAM that "the crooked Biden Department of Injustice lets Hunter off the hook AGAIN!" And Rep Comer will demand another series of hearings with testimony from Weiss and Garland. And media outlets will holler about how this new "scandal" will "upend the Biden campaign."
Not a lawyer, but this strikes me as standard federal DOJ hardball, sending a clear message to Hunter: "take a plea, or else we will take your ass to court in whatever jurisdiction we need to and nail to the wall".
Past due taxes are normally punished only by a fine and interest on the amount owed. Mis-reporting is a more serious offense that simply not reporting. If Hunter needs to do a couple of years at Club Fed, it's a small price to pay for Trump being shipped off to Gitmo so he is very effectively silenced.
Hunter paid the taxes and penalties a year or so ago.
It was three years ago,
I need to spice things up a bit. Here is a message from Hunter to his daughter Naomi (from the infamous aptop, which the FBI knew was confirmed when they told twitter to block the story).
The source is the New York Post, the news site that broke the laptop story and got censored while Obama was the boss of the FBI.
https://nypost.com/2022/04/09/hunter-biden-frequently-covered-family-expenses-texts-reveal/
' “I hope you all can do what I did and pay for everything for this entire family for 30 years,” Hunter Biden groused to daughter Naomi in January 2019. “It’s really hard. But don’t worry, unlike pop, I won’t make you give me half your salary." '
Feed the troll if you wish. But I may wait to check back on this thread.
I will leave with this: "The fall of an empire happens gradually, and then all at once."
Nobody was censored. Censorship is preventing publication.
And about the kvetching — Hunter lived in his parent’s home from time to time, and seems to have had use of the vacation cottage. Why shouldn’t he have contributed to their upkeep? I got ‘kickbacks’ from my kids when they returned to the nest.
The email in question has never been validated by anybody. Hunter hadn't been in receipt of a "salary" for many years in 2019, nor has Comer claimed to have found any payments from him to Joe.
There is good reason to suspect that his iClould account was compromised. Marcy Wheeler covered it in detail at her blog.
Given that Hunter himself has never made such a claim or pointed to a single item in the laptop that he claims was fabricated, this is some serious reaching.
I’m sure his lawyers have advised him to say nothing about it, since the obvious chain-of-custody fail means that the laptop contents will never be admissible in court. I doubt it could even be proven that the contents were obtained legally.
Why feed someone who opens a comment with some bare-faced lies?
Oh, everyone knows what he is. I while back a started a troll rolodex with some of their favorite hits copied/linked for each troll. Does anyone else do this, and if so, could we compare lists? Oh, and when I say 'a while back' I mean when I finally accepted the fact that neither ignore nor up/down voting features were not going to be implemented on this site. Otherwise I'd simply put Atticus, civiltwilight, MF et. al on my ignore list and move on; all they have to offer are, essentially, date rapes and AIDS jokes.
"FBI knew was confirmed when they told twitter to block the story" The FBI never told twitter or anyone else to block the story. In fact the latest 'scandalous' detail is that the FBI lied in claiming they only talked to twitter one about the story and that was to say no comment. They found an email where twitter says the FBI told twitter there was no evidence the laptop was not real. the day after the NYPost broke the story.
The plea deal seems to have been a case of attorney incompetence on one or both sides, with genuine disagreement about what the deal was. If Weiss feels Hunter's lawyers were trying to pull a con job on him, it's understandable that he's reacted by deciding to go to trial.
The Republican indignation about the appointment of Weiss as special counsel being a supposed "cover up" tactic is comical, given more than 30 of their senators wrote to Merrick Garland 11 months ago urging him to do that exact thing. But of course back then, they didn't have Comer and Jordan performing on Fox every night about their Hunter Biden "bombshells".
There was no genuine disagreement about the deal. The deal was in writing and makes clear Hunter's lawyers were simply lying. Why they caved in 5 minutes to settle that issue. The entire republican contingent on the foreign affairs committee wrote an open letter to Joe in the NYTimes the week before he traveled to Ukraine calling on him not to go soft on that prosecutor but to get him fired. Now Joe must have taken a bribe to do what the republican senators asked and get Burisma's main protector fired. Archer literally testified last week that Burisma was unhappy the prosecutor was fired.
Why now? Marsha! Marsha! Marsha! Oops: Bengazi! Bengazi! Bengazi! Let me try one more time: Biden! Biden! Biden!
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