Investigative journalist Peter Schweizer says the Department of Justice did President Joe Biden and his son Hunter a “massive favor” by appointing David Weiss to the rank of Special Counsel.
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment last week of Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss as a special counsel to continue his prosecution of Hunter Biden after plea talks broke down, opens a new, politically fraught chapter in the long-running legal drama as his father, President Biden, campaigns for re-election.
For one thing, it’s not clear whether the appointment of Weiss is even legal. “Weiss has been a DOJ employee since 2017,” Schweizer pointed out. “The [special counsel] law says they must come from outside the federal government, outside the Department of Justice… David Weiss does not,” he added.
Not only that, but with special counsel status, Weiss can now stonewall Congress’s own investigation by claiming that it needs to maintain evidence for its own purposes, according to congressional sources.
Russell Dye, a spokesman for House Republican Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan of Ohio, called Weiss’s appointment to special counsel “a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption.”
Schweizer, who broke the Hunter Biden story wide open in his 2018 book Secret Empires, noted on the most recent episode of his podcast, “The Drill Down,” that it was David Weiss’s office that concocted the now-abandoned plea deal. That deal offered Hunter Biden a guilty plea to two tax misdemeanors and a gun charge with a suspended sentence along with a promise not to prosecute him any further. A federal judge rejected that scheme.
“Two choices: This is either massive incompetence [by Merrick Garland], or there is some level of design behind this muddle,” Schweizer says. “I think this is by design.”
Schweizer and co-host Eric Eggers, both with the Government Accountability Institute, also reacted to the release by House Oversight Committee Republicans of the transcript of an interview with a former FBI agent who worked on the Hunter Biden investigation.
The agent corroborated claims from two IRS whistleblowers that Hunter Biden’s legal team was given an advance tip-off of an upcoming attempt to get an interview with him in connection with their probe.
And there’s more. Schweizer and Eggers note there’s shady activity by the Secret Service, dating back to an incident in 2016 when Hunter Biden left personal effects, drug residue, and even a crack pipe inside a returned rental car in Arizona.
The Secret Service ran interference for Hunter Biden, shielding him from an investigation by local Phoenix police of that incident. That subject was discussed on The Drilldown last month.
“The Secret Service is supposed to guard their protectees’ physical security, not shield them from legal scrutiny,” Schweizer said.
As Eggers quipped, “there are things being pursued here, but justice is apparently not one of them.”
To hear more of the Drill Down podcast – click here.