His problems with the US judiciary should have just disappeared into thin air. Now Hunter Biden, 53, has a federal special counsel breathing down his neck and his father, Joe Biden, has a political problem. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the appointment of the special counsel on Friday. The move comes as a surprise but is logical given the increasingly strange circumstances of the case.
Prosecutors from the Justice Department had agreed to a pact with Hunter Biden: the president’s son should plead guilty to two tax offenses, but would receive extensive protection from the judiciary. But when a judge saw the details of the agreement, she refused her approval, Biden’s contract with the amnesty clauses failed. Exactly why the Justice Department offered him such generous terms is an open question.
The case has now been upgraded to a special investigation. A Special Counsel is used in cases where the Justice Department wants to ensure the greatest possible distance between its political side and the legal prosecutors. This means that the investigator can work largely independently of the ministry and decide on an indictment.
So now it is clear: David Weiss will not be slowed down
Responsible for the Biden case is David Weiss, the same prosecutor who previously led the investigation into Hunter Biden. Garland hardly had any other choice anyway: Weiss himself had informed him that the investigation had “reached a stage where he had to continue his work as a special investigator”. Rejecting the application was not an option for Garland: Republicans have been claiming for weeks that Weiss’ work is being slowed down by the Justice Department for political reasons. A key point of the dispute was the question of whether Weiss had ever wanted to become a special investigator but had been prevented from doing so.
So now it is clear: White is not slowed down. The special counsel in the Hunter Biden case will investigate and rule on an indictment just as independently as the special counsel in the Donald Trump cases and the secret documents case against Joe Biden.
Only: What else Weiss wants to investigate with his additional investigative options is not known. The president’s son Biden had not declared taxes for 2017 and 2018, but later paid them later. In addition, he had concealed his drug use on a gun license. Weiss could now sue Biden in a different state than Delaware, where the Bidens have an extraordinarily dense network.
There is no evidence of involvement or even misconduct on the part of the father
Republicans in Congress have already launched a series of investigations to unearth further suspicions about Hunter Biden. Biden may have failed to register as a foreign lobbyist, Republicans accuse him. Among other things, he had tens of millions of dollars transferred from Eastern European and Chinese companies, presumably because they were trying to influence Joe Biden. So far, however, there is no direct connection to Father Biden.
For Joe Biden, however, the ongoing news about his son’s legal problems is a political burden. There is no evidence of involvement or even misconduct on the part of the father. But Republicans have at least found witnesses to Biden’s participation in his son’s business calls.
With various investigations, the Republicans in Congress are giving the impression that a “Biden crime family” is at work. So far they have not brought anything tangible to light. But it fits into the narrative of some Republicans that no one in Washington can be trusted that everyone there is a criminal – which pushes Donald Trump’s problems with the judiciary over his attempted coup into the background.