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The more the U.S. attorney in the Hunter Biden case sets the record straight about his investigation, the more he tells Republicans what they don’t want to hear. Politico reported this morning on the GOP’s latest setback.
U.S. Attorney David Weiss says he has not requested special counsel status as part of the years-long investigation into Hunter Biden. “To clarify an apparent misperception and to avoid future confusion, I wish to make one point clear: in this case, I have not requested Special Counsel designation pursuant to” the statue for appointing a special counsel, Weiss wrote in the letter to Sen. Lindsey Graham, first obtained by POLITICO.
In case anyone needs a refresher, it was in March when Attorney General Merrick Garland testified under oath that Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware, had the authority to bring charges against Hunter Biden and the investigation was free of political influence. Garland added at the time that Weiss had never asked to be made a special counsel.
Recently, however, Republicans convinced themselves that the attorney general had lied, pointing to Gary Shapley, an IRS official and apparent whistleblower who made claims at odds with Garland’s version of events. It’s among the reasons House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has repeatedly raised the prospect of impeaching the attorney general.
Even before Weiss’ response, the controversy — I’m using the word loosely — was difficult to take seriously. As a recent New York Times report explained, “[I]t remains unclear how much of the difference in the accounts reflects possible factors like miscommunication, clashing substantive judgments among agencies over how best to pursue a prosecution, or personal enmity among officials working on a high-pressure, high-profile case. Investigators like Mr. Shapley whose job it is to uncover evidence often have different perspectives from prosecutors who have to take into account how to treat defendants fairly and present cases to juries.”
In other words, as GOP officials ask who’s lied, the answer might very well be no one.
But the Trump-appointed prosecutor has made the Republicans’ crusade even more difficult. It was 10 days ago when Weiss explained to House GOP lawmakers that he hadn’t been blocked from pursuing serious charges against the president’s son, adding that he hadn’t retaliated against the IRS’s Shapley.
And today we’re learning that Weiss has also explained to Senate Republicans that he didn’t ask to be named a special counsel, the party’s claims to the contrary notwithstanding.
“I was assured that I would be granted this authority if it proved necessary. And this assurance came months before the October 7, 2022, meeting referenced throughout the whistleblowers’ allegations,” Weiss wrote. He added in his letter to Graham, “In this case, I’ve ... never been denied the authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction.”
This leaves Republicans with a choice: They can come to terms with the fact that their crusade is sorely lacking in evidence, or they can attack the Trump-appointed prosecutor, who has no incentive to lie, and who was kept on by President Joe Biden, even as the U.S. attorney investigated his own son.
Watch this space.