Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday that U.S. Attorney David Weiss has been named special counsel, allowing him to continue his investigation into President Biden’s son Hunter free from standard Justice Department oversight.
In a brief statement, Garland explained that Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, had requested special counsel authority on Tuesday and that he had been granted the appointment “after consideration.”
Weiss will continue to oversee the “ongoing investigation” of Hunter as well as “any other matters that arose or may arise from that investigation,” Garland said.
The appointment “reinforces for the American people the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters,” the attorney general added.
Garland did not take any questions.
While Weiss has maintained publicly that he has had the authority to bring charges against Hunter in whatever jurisdiction he felt appropriate, FBI and IRS whistleblowers revealed to Congress several months ago that Weiss privately told them he had been blocked from bringing charges in Washington, D.C.
The announcement comes weeks after a plea deal Hunter Biden’s legal team brokered with federal prosecutors fell through. Under the deal, Hunter was to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and submit to a diversion agreement related to a felony gun charge in exchange for broad immunity from future charges related to foreign influence peddling.
Judge Maryellen Noreika challenged the terms of the deal in court, pointing out that such a broad immunity deal was unprecedented, prompting prosecutors to rescind the original deal and offer a more narrow agreement.
Moments before Garland made his statement, prosecutors said in a court filing that the revised deal had fallen through and that they expect the case to go to trial.
Hunter’s lawyer, Christopher Clark, said he expected “a fair resolution” to the case regardless of where it’s charged.
“This U.S. attorney has diligently been investigating my client for five years, and he had proposed a resolution which we fully intend to pursue in court,” Clark said in a statement. “It is hard to see why he would have proposed such a resolution if there were other offenses he could have successfully prosecuted, and we are aware of none.”
The loss of immunity related to Hunter’s foreign business dealings is pertinent given that Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have in recent months uncovered extensive evidence of what they say is foreign influence peddling by the first son.
On Wednesday, Oversight chairman James Comer announced that the committee had uncovered bank records indicating that Hunter received a total of $20 million in payments from oligarchs in Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine while his father was vice president.
Those payments included $3.5 million sent from Russian billionaire Yelena Baturina to the shell company Rosemont Seneca Thornton in February 2014. Roughly $1 million was transferred to Hunter’s business partner Devon Archer, while the rest was used to fund a new account Rosemont Seneca Bohai, which was used by both Archer and Hunter to receive other foreign wires.
After Baturina sent the massive sum to Rosemont Seneca Thornton, then-Vice President Biden attended dinner with Baturina, Archer, Hunter, and others at Cafe Milano in Washington, D.C.
Then-Vice President Biden also attended dinners with Hunter Biden; Archer; Baturina; Burisma executives; and Kenes Rakishev, a Kazakhstani oligarch, in the spring of 2014 and 2015 at Cafe Milano.
Also in spring 2014, Archer and Biden joined the board of directors of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma at a salary of $1 million per year each. Then-Vice President Biden visited Ukraine soon after Archer and the younger Biden received their first payments — payments that were sent to Rosemont Seneca Bohai and later sent in incremental amounts to Hunter Biden’s different bank accounts.
Emails obtained by the House Oversight Committee revealed that Archer and Hunter pitched the then-vice president’s trip and the contents of a speech he made while there as the product of their influence.
Archer told the committee last week that Hunter’s value on Burisma’s board was “the brand.” Archer said then-vice president Biden was “the brand.”
“Burisma would have gone out of business if ‘the brand’ had not been attached to it,” Archer said, according to the committee.
Weiss’s appointment as special counsel will shield him from being forced to testify before the Oversight Committee. Comer, the committee’s chairman, announced Thursday that he intends to subpoena members of the Biden family to testify before the panel.
Garland’s announcement may mark a turning point in the political fortunes of President Biden, who has thus far insisted that he had no involvement in his son’s business dealings.