The Republicans scored a point this Friday thanks to an own goal — or an excess of zeal to show fairness — by the Department of Justice. US Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that David Weiss, the federal prosecutor who has brought criminal charges against President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, will have additional authority to investigate whether the president’s son is involved in business. irregular, as the Republicans denounce. “Weiss’s appointment reinforces to the American people the Department’s commitment to [de Justicia] with independence and responsibility in particularly delicate matters”, Garland declared at a press conference in Washington. After the appointment was made public, Weiss has said that Hunter Biden could be tried criminally.
Garland’s promotion of prosecutor David Weiss to counsel or special counsel comes as Republicans in Congress threaten an investigation and possible impeachment (political trial) to the president for considering that he has benefited from his son’s business. There is no evidence to prove the claim, but his campaign against Hunter Biden intensifies as his leader, Donald Trump, accumulates indictments. The Republicans denounce the double standards of the Department of Justice, benevolent in their opinion —until now— with Hunter Biden and, however, implacable with the candidate for re-election in 2024, who has accumulated three charges in four months.
The environment of the former Republican president has reacted with skepticism to the appointment of the special prosecutor who will supervise the investigation into Hunter Biden. Through a statement, the Trump campaign, the favorite candidate in the Republican primaries for the 2024 presidential elections, replied that the Biden family has been “protected by the Department of Justice for decades.” “If this special prosecutor is truly independent – even though he has failed to file the appropriate charges after a four-year investigation and appears to be trying to move the case somewhere else [tribunal] more pro-Democratic—will quickly conclude that Joe Biden, his troublesome son Hunter, and their accomplices, including the media, who colluded with the 51 intelligence officials who knowingly misled the public about the [ordenador] Hunter’s laptop, they must face the consequences,” the statement read.
Hunter Biden’s laptop as evidence of the charge is another of the Republicans’ arguments for denouncing the double judicial yardstick. The president’s son took a laptop to be repaired and never picked up at an establishment in Wilmington (Delaware), the family’s city. The store owner made a copy of his hard drive and gave the information to allies of Donald Trump. In it were tens of thousands of text messages and emails and more than 2,000 photos, including some of sexual content. The existence of the computer and some apparently compromised messages for Joe Biden became public in the midst of the 2020 election campaign, when they were published by The New York Post.The then-Democratic candidate attributed the spread to a Russian disinformation campaign.
Unlike Garland, who was appointed by Biden, Weiss was appointed as federal prosecutor for Delaware — the state where the case against Hunter Biden is being investigated — by then-President Trump, but has continued in his position during the Democratic Administration. His appointment as a special counsel or prosecutor gives him more autonomy than federal prosecutors typically enjoy.
Just two weeks ago, Hunter Biden’s pact with the Prosecutor’s Office to avoid jail time was up in the air due to the doubts of a judge appointed by Trump. Under that deal, the president’s scion was to plead guilty to two settled tax offenses — non-payment of taxes — to avoid a more serious charge of illegal possession of a weapon while he was addicted to drugs. Doubts about the extent of the judge’s immunity temporarily derailed the deal, while clamor grew in the Republican caucus in Congress in favor of a impeachment to your father. It is precisely the blocking of the case that has pushed Garland to give Weiss more powers to investigate it.
..
subscribe
Republicans accuse Biden of profiting from his son’s companies in Ukraine and China, although they have provided no evidence. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy noted last month that he could begin impeachment proceedings in the fall, on the eve of the official start of the 2024 primaries.
“Crazy conspiracy theories”
The White House has rejected these accusations as “crazy conspiracy theories” and has reiterated that Biden did not participate in his son’s business, developed when the former was Barack Obama’s vice president. Weiss’s years-long investigation has found no evidence that Hunter used his father’s political influence to his own advantage, as Republicans denounce.
Hunter Biden, 53 years old and a lawyer by profession, has worked as a lobbyist, lawyer, consultant and investment banker before dedicating himself to painting with great success – his paintings are listed at 500,000 dollars (455,000 euros) -, to reinvent himself after a dark stage of addiction to alcohol and crack unleashed, according to his memoirs, by the death of his brother Beau from a brain tumor in 2015.
It was Weiss who accused Hunter Biden of not paying taxes in 2017 and 2018 and of illegally possessing a firearm while addicted to drugs, a felony more serious than the prosecutor and punishable by jail time. But the blockade of Biden’s agreement with the Prosecutor’s Office was suspended due to the judge’s objection, giving Republicans more arguments to intensify their attack on the Bidens.
Weiss is the third quasi-independent prosecutor appointed by Garland to oversee politically sensitive investigations. The best known is special prosecutor Jack Smith, appointed in November to oversee two investigations of a political nature against Trump, which have been substantiated in two indictments: in June, for the Mar-a-Lago papers, and on August 1. , for his attempts to reverse the result of the 2020 elections, which culminated in the attack on the Capitol in January 2021. In the case of the classified documents, Trump himself and his assistant Walt Nauta pleaded not guilty (not guilty) Thursday ) of the three charges that Smith added to the initial 37, for his attempt to destroy video surveillance images required by the investigators. Trump has pleaded not guilty in each and every open case, all three criminal and other civil.
The third, and most unknown, of the special prosecutors appointed by Garland is Robert Hur, who is investigating whether Biden mishandled classified documents after leaving the vice-presidential role in 2017. Classified documents were also found in the possession of Mike Pence, who was vice president. of Trump.
According to an Ipsos poll for the Reuters agency conducted in June, half of Republicans and 33% of Democrats believe that Hunter has received preferential treatment from Weiss, who assures that the Department of Justice has not interfered at all. in his task. Most of those surveyed assure that this will not affect her vote in 2024.
Follow all the international information onFacebook andTwitteror inour weekly newsletter.
.
.
