Garland bellyflops into US presidential campaign — again

The editorial board of The Wall Street Journal says the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden is best understood as political damage control

Joe Biden, with son Hunter, lands in Syracuse, New York. Picture: AFP

Merrick Garland’s appointment on Friday of David Weiss as a special counsel is best understood as political damage control after the US Attorney-General’s sweetheart plea deal with Hunter Biden blew up under judicial questioning. The result may be worse for the President’s son but better for Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.

The Justice Department is telling federal judge Maryellen Noreika that it wants to withdraw its wrist-slap plea deal, and Hunter’s lawyers have until Monday (Tuesday AEST) to reply. The request vindicates critics of the deal, and it poses greater criminal risk for the younger Biden if Judge Noreika grants the Justice Department’s request. He may now end up facing some felony tax charges, as two investigating Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers told congress they had recommended, or perhaps other charges.

Yet there’s reason to doubt that this special counsel decision will end up reassuring anybody about equal justice. Weiss is the same prosecutor who cut the discredited plea deal with Hunter Biden. He will now have some additional powers to bring an indictment in other jurisdictions if he wants. But as the US Attorney for Delaware he has been investigating the Hunter case for five years.

The whistleblowers claim Weiss failed to follow the trail of foreign money that flowed to Hunter. They say he had previously sought special-counsel status from Justice but was denied. The whistleblowers also say Weiss asked to bring charges in California and Washington, DC, but was blocked there too.

Weiss has denied that he previously sought special-counsel status, but on Friday Garland said Weiss had asked for it last week and he granted it. What changed to make this the right decision now, other than the embarrassing implosion of the plea deal and the political fallout around it? This is vindication for the whistleblowers in any case.

But is Weiss now going to pursue the Hunter money trail wherever it leads, including perhaps to other members of the Biden family? Keep in mind he isn’t “independent” in any legal sense and still must report to, and have his prosecutions approved by, Garland. As a career prosecutor, Weiss has to know that pursuing the Biden money trail with any vigor would make him a political target of the Democrat-media machine.

Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Christopher Clark, said on Friday that he expected a “fair resolution” of the case whether it is charged in Delaware, where the plea bargain was struck, or in some other jurisdiction. That doesn’t sound as if he thinks Weiss is going to turn into Eliot Ness.

Special-counsel status is also politically convenient for Weiss and Garland because it means both men can use the excuse of an “ongoing investigation” to refuse to answer questions from Congress. Justice is also likely to wall off FBI agents and others who have worked on the case. And forget about members of the Biden family. Congress’s probe may have hit a dead end.

Weiss is running up against the statute of limitations on tax and gun charges, and he may have to make an early decision on those.

But if he wants to, he could draw out other matters all the way through to the November 2024 election. Hunter Biden’s many shell companies, President Biden’s role, and other matters may vanish into the special counsel’s secret investigation.

Weiss will be obliged to file a report to the A-G at the end of his investigation, but the A-G doesn’t have to release it to the public. Meanwhile, President Biden will have the excuse of the investigation to refuse to answer questions about the Biden family business during the campaign, and the press corps may give him that pass.

This is another example of the way that Garland, supposedly a man of sound judgment, has bellyflopped his department into the 2024 presidential campaign.

He unleashed special counsel Jack Smith to pursue Donald Trump, and Smith has obliged with two prosecutions. He named a special counsel to investigate Joe Biden’s mishandling of secret documents, but no one expects anything beyond a stern rebuke to come out of that. Now he’s doing the same with the Hunter prosecution to uncertain result.

Garland claims he has done all this to remove any political taint from the investigations, but this is having the opposite effect. We are now going to have a presidential election debate adjudicated in effect by special counsels. Don’t expect any of this to calm our partisan furies or restore faith in non-partisan justice.

The WAll Street Journal