Every attorney general faces a moment when he or she must uphold principles and the rule of law or bend to the political whims of the moment. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t, you might as well do the right thing, so the country’s first female attorney general, Janet Reno, described it.
Now, one of Reno’s top aides and successors, Merrick Garland, is emulating his apolitical approach as attorney general, including appointing two special counsels to independently investigate President Joe Biden and his son Hunter . The White House should highlight these appointments as proof of the president’s commitment to the rule of law — not undermine them as it has in recent weeks.
It was almost a year ago, on January 12, 2023, when Garland nominated former U.S. Attorney Robert Hur to investigate how classified documents ended up at the Biden Penn Center and the personal residence of the president, including his garage. In the context of former President Trump’s indictment for accusations of willful and deliberate withholding of classified documentsthe Biden team drop, drop, drop more information made the findings even worse.
Since then, Special Prosecutor Hur has conducted his investigation with complete discretion, even recently. interview Biden over two days. An announcement, whatever the conclusion, could come as soon as this month. A leading news media reported that the special prosecutor will criticize the way the president and his aides handled classified documents, but that he not bring criminal charges. Certainly the Biden White House would be satisfied with this outcome, if not with the apolitical process that led to it.
And this leads to Garland’s nomination of U.S. Attorney David Weiss as special counsel for the ongoing investigation into the president’s son, Hunter. However, in two recent interviews, Biden aides suggested that elevating Weiss to special counsel for Hunter’s case was unnecessary and inherently political. One of them reportedly said it was a “way of avoiding a difficult decision under the guise of objectivity.”
These anonymous employees ignored an inconvenient fact: The Biden White House – not Garland – initially decided to retain Trump-era U.S. attorney to continue investigation into president’s son. Choosing the referee and then destroying him is not only bad form; It’s a horrible policy that threatens the fragile bipartisan coalition that elected Biden in 2020. The president should tell his aides to put aside these anonymous, short-sighted attacks and stay focused on their only mission: his re-election.
On January 11, Hunter Biden will make his first appearance on nine federal tax charges in California. It shouldn’t have come to this. This case, as well as gun charges in Delaware, should have been settled last summer. The fact that these cases are not trailing the younger Biden may reflect more on his attorney’s representation at the time than the Justice Department’s pursuit of charges when the plea deal collapsed under judicial review.
After that, Hunter Biden quickly began to rely on the tenacious lawyer Abbe Lowell, who joined his legal team months before. If Lowell had been in charge of the case earlier, he could have effectively negotiated the fine print of the plea deal and ensured that defense attorneys and prosecutors were on the same page. This is the decisive error of this unfortunate legal saga.
Lowell must now rely on a weaker argument, namely that Weiss bowed to political pressure by filing suit against Biden. But not all arguments are valid: Lowell has shown no evidence in court that these charges, while rare, are the result of vindictive or selective prosecutions. And consider this: If Weiss were truly motivated by politics, he likely would have filed a complaint against Hunter Biden during the Trump administration. Instead, news of the investigation became public the month After the November 2020 elections.
Here’s the truth: Despite what Trump and House Republicans would have the public believe, the criminal charges against Hunter Biden have nothing to do with President Biden. However, they are “legally justified”, like US Senator Chris Murphy (Democrat of Connecticut) observed last month. Unless the plea deal is reinstated or judges dismiss the cases, juries will decide Hunter Biden’s guilt or innocence. With talented lawyers on his side, the younger Biden could very well defeat the charges. On the other hand, if convicted, the White House has admirably stated that President Biden not forgive his son. Think about it for a moment.
The White House clearly understands the political peril of such a move. They should take a closer look and highlight these two special adviser appointments for what they are: features – not bugs – of the administration that President Biden has painstakingly assembled to restore honor, independence and independence. integrity of the Department of Justice.
By placing confidence in the special counsels’ independent application of facts to law, the President would reaffirm his commitment to the rule of law and further enhance public confidence in the process that will bring both investigations to their proper conclusion.
Anthony Coley is the former director of the Office of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. He is currently a justice and legal affairs contributor at NBC News, MSNBC and CNBC, as well as a founding partner of Corner Office Strategies, a public affairs consultancy.