CNN anchor Jake Tapper doesn’t usually offer much praise for Republicans, but he uncharacteristically gave them some on Friday after Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate — allegedly — Hunter Biden.
Tapper said that GOP lawmakers are right to be skeptical of the appointment.
“I think there are some legitimate questions about this whole situation. First of all, I do think it’s fair to question why would U.S. Attorney [David] Weiss be appointed to special counsel. Usually, a special counsel comes– is an outside attorney. Now, it has happened before, Durham came from inside, and the attorney general has the right to do that, but it is odd,” Tapper said.
“This plea deal was picked apart by the judge. So, one could ask, why would you stick with the U.S. attorney if he, you know, this was a failure, a colossal failure? The two sides had not even agreed upon what was in that plea deal. And then I think there are questions about whether or not it was harsh enough, this plea deal,” he added.
“This move makes it seem as though, well, maybe the whistleblowers were right. Maybe what they were alleging is true, and he couldn’t charge whatever he wanted to charge, and now he does. So I do have a lot of questions about that, and I do think some of the political questions being raised by Republicans have merit,” he said.
On Friday, Garland revealed his decision to designate a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, the president’s first son.
The Attorney General selected Weiss, the federal prosecutor from Delaware who has been actively involved in leading the investigations related to Hunter Biden for several years.
Several legal experts said that appointing Weiss violated the Justice Department’s own rules for special counsel appointments.
Foxs News’ legal analyst, Andrew McCarthy, himself a former U.S. attorney, called it a sham and pointed out how it violated established rules.
“This is a sham. There is no special counsel investigation. There is no Biden investigation,” he began.
“What makes a special counsel special is that you’re a lawyer who’s brought in from outside the United States government,” McCarthy continued. Contrary to that foundational idea, he pointed out that Weiss, despite his new title, is still very much a part of the Biden administration, being “a top official in the Biden Justice Department.”
“This is the Biden Justice Department’s vehicle for maintaining control of an investigation that they are not pursuing,” he continued. “They’ve had the case for five years. They’ve never indicted it. They’re strategically allowing the statute of limitations to run to the point that the 2014 and 2015 conduct, which covers most of the $21 million that the congressional investigation report showed this week, that’s already time-barred.”
