BREAKING: Special Prosecutor Appointed for Hunter Biden—What This Does and Doesn’t Mean | SYSTEM UPDATE #129
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, House Republicans have long been demanding that Attorney General Merrick Garland appoint a special counsel to conduct the criminal investigation into Hunter Biden.
Their argument was obvious.
It is impossible for a Justice Department that answers to Joe Biden to conduct a fair and sufficiently aggressive inquiry into the son of the President to whom the DOJ answers.
Those requests were long rejected, with both Garland and the U.S.
Attorney in Delaware overseeing the case, David Weiss, offering the same justification for why a special counsel wasn't needed, namely, There has been no interference of any kind from the Biden GOJ, they said, and they insisted Weiss has had full unfettered authority to take their investigation wherever it may lead.
As it turns out, that investigation led virtually nowhere.
Last month, Weiss's office announced it had reached a plea deal with Hunter.
It was something a criminal defendant facing serious charges of tax evasion, gun charges, and FARA violations could only dream of.
Under the deal offered to him, Hunter would plead guilty only to two misdemeanor charges and would not spend a day in prison.
But the Biden-DOJ's attempt to shove that very generous agreement through the court system fell into several pits over the last month.
First, two obviously credible IRS whistleblowers who had served as senior investigators in the case and were obviously risking career appraisals by stepping forward testified before Congress that they were repeatedly prevented from pursuing the kinds of investigative lines that they would typically have pursued and have always pursued in every other similar tax case.
Then, in late July, the Justice Department's plea deal with Hunter was presented to a federal judge, Mary Ellen Noriega, of the Federal District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, who, clearly shocked by the broad scope of the deal and the highly unusual structure of it, one that would allow it to be enacted without having her have to scrutinize or approve it, she began asking just a few basic questions to the prosecutors, only to watch the deal immediately fall apart once it was subjected to the slightest judicial scrutiny.
With the deal blown up and with suspicions continuing to linger that the Biden-Geo day gave unusually favorable treatment to the President's son, some media outlets along with House Republicans continue to investigate what really happened here with Hunter's profiteering in Ukraine, China, and elsewhere.
What they found was increasingly compelling evidence, now a mountain's worth, that Hunter Biden was not only selling the appearance of access to his powerful father when he was vice president, but selling the reality of access and the ability for his father to take action to benefit those paying him.
As a result of all of this, Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland today finally announced the appointment of a special counsel to investigate all of this.
Yet bizarrely, he did not choose someone outside of the authority of the White House, or this investigation, or even outside the government.
Instead, he simply took the same prosecutor responsible for this entire debacle, David Weiss, who oversaw the preposterous plea deal that just fell apart, and simply changed his title to special counsel.
That obviously raises this pressing question.
Is this really about finally bringing consequences and fair administration of justice to the president's son?
Or is it about just further delaying and covering up the corruption that has driven this investigation from the start as well as attempts both in the media and in the DOJ to shield Joe Biden from possible implication in all of these charges?
We'll examine all angles of these events tonight.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
It should go without saying that there is an inherent conflict of interest whenever the Justice Department is criminally investigating the son of the United States president.
The Justice Department, of course, is run and overseen by the Attorney General who answers directly to the American President.
And that is why in the past, every time there has been a criminal investigation involving either the President or someone very close to him, A special counsel is typically appointed to shield the investigation from the obvious political pressures to which it would otherwise be vulnerable.
The appointment, for example, of Robert Mueller to investigate Russiagate because of the belief that Jeff Sessions, as a Trump appointee, would be incapable of carrying out a fair investigation, or the appointment of Jack Smith,
into the allegations of Donald Trump based on the concern that Joe Biden might influence a criminal investigation against his main political opposition was based on this precept that we don't trust the Justice Department and those who work for it to carry out politically sensitive investigations, criminal investigations of the president or those close to him.
All of that has been completely violated when it came to the various criminal investigations into the person Joe Biden refers to as my only surviving son, Hunter.
He has long faced multiple charges, multiple suspicions of evading taxes, of failing to pay his taxes, of hiding his income, of improperly accounting for it, of lying on a gun application about his drug use, of possible violations of FARA, which is a law that requires individual American citizens to register as foreign agents if they're taking money from a foreign government to act
On their behalf, that is a crime that is rarely prosecuted or had been in Washington until it became time to put Donald Trump's associates in prison.
And suddenly FARA became a very important law that people were criminally charged with when they couldn't find anything else to charge them with.
And now Hunter Biden faces a similar possible prosecution.
And for years now, House Republicans have been urging, demanding, That the president's appointee, Merrick Garland, appoint a special counsel out of concerns that allowing a U.S.
attorney who worked for the Justice Department and answers to Merrick Garland, even one appointed by Trump, David Weiss of Delaware, the special of the U.S.
Attorney for Delaware, would be incapable of carrying out a fair investigation.
And that has been continuously rejected, that request has.
And as a result, it has been David Weiss leading the way in determining and overseeing and making decisions about this criminal investigation, even though he answers to the Justice Department and is part of the Biden Justice Department.
All of that became a lot more suspicious when just recently two IRS whistleblowers came forward under their own name.
No conceivable benefit.
No one suggested they were motivated by partisan or ideological biases.
They risk their careers, their entire career in public service as IRS investigators, to come forward and accuse the Biden administration of unduly and improperly restricting and limiting the kind of criminal investigation they always take in these kinds of cases, tax cases.
When it came to Hunter Biden they were barred from doing all sorts of interviews and subpoenas that to them said they seemed obvious the kind of thing that you would do in a criminal investigation almost like somebody was sitting atop the investigation and making sure that it never resulted in serious charges for Hunter Biden.
At the same time that those IRS whistleblowers came forward Just a couple of weeks later, the prosecutors in this case under David Weiss announced that they had reached a plea deal with Hunter Biden.
And it was very obvious that the plea deal was unbelievably generous the minute it was unveiled.
After all, if you are facing serious criminal charges at a federal level of the kind Hunter Biden was facing, to be offered two misdemeanor counts and not a day in jail Is the classic sweetheart deal, meaning the kind of deal that you get if somebody is trying to be very generous to you.
That deal was so generous to Hunter Biden that one of the provisions in it actually provided or seemed to provide for full-scale immunity against not only these charges, but all potential charges in the future arising out of any of these events.
And the minute this was presented to the judge, She zeroed in on that provision, which she said had not been provided to her in the papers that had been submitted to her.
And she instantly began asking her, is this really what it looks like?
Is this really as broad of an immunity provision as it seems?
Is this really going to, for example, immunize Hunter Biden in the event that there are investigations into whether he violated FARA, which is not part of this case?
It seems, if you read it like it would, And she was shocked by how broad it was.
And then suddenly these prosecutors, knowing that they're now in public, knowing that they had just been accused by credible IRS whistleblowers of corruptly limiting the investigation, seeming to protect Hunter Biden, and knowing there was a lot of media concern and concern in the Congress about how absurdly and unusually Generous this agreement seemed to be.
Soon as they were asked by the judge, using that tone of shock, are you really offering him this?
They immediately stood up and denied it.
And they said, of course not, your honor.
This doesn't have anything to do with future cases.
And soon as they said that, Hunter Biden's lawyers stood up and said, what?
Of course it does.
That's been our agreement all along.
If we don't have this immunity provision that we were promised, then we don't have a deal.
And the judge immediately said, obviously, there's no meeting of the mind, which you need for any kind of an agreement, meaning both parties need to have a common understanding of what they're signing for there to be a agreement.
Otherwise, not a real agreement.
Clearly, what seemed to have happened was that the Justice Department gave Hunter Biden exactly the broad immunity provisions his lawyers thought they were getting, and then only denied that given all the media attention, but especially the judge's scrutiny.
The minute that she applied it and the deal fell apart.
Now, what also was so amazing about that day was that the plea bargain was structured under a provision of law that would circumvent the need to have judicial approval for the plea bargain.
And the judge observed that she had never seen that before and she asked the prosecutors if this is unprecedented, if they had ever used this structure previously or if it was only for this case and they said they had never used it before.
Which only raised her suspicions even further.
That led the deal to fall apart.
There was clearly no agreement, but she said, come back in two weeks.
The expectation was, certainly was mine, that they would work out a deal because it's in Hunter Biden's interest so much to get this deal, that even if you don't get everything you wanted, you still take it.
It just seems as though once some light was finally shined on what was really going on here, The prosecutors got very timid and very cautious and didn't want to give him the immunity provision his lawyer was demanding and thought they had already gotten, which they clearly had already gotten, until some judicial and media light was shined on it.
Meanwhile, at the same time that this is all happening, there is now finally emerging, there has been evidence for quite some time, but in the last three months there has really been an effort by the media to unearth evidence Not about what Hunter Biden did, but about what Joe Biden did.
And this has always been the key deceit at the heart of this case.
From the very beginning, going all the way back to the weeks before the 2020 election, when the New York Post got their hands on Hunter Biden's laptop and began reporting on the documents that were on it, as was their duty journalistically to do, There was an immediate attempt, based on obvious fear about what this laptop would reveal, to get it suppressed and discredited.
That was when the CIA lied and had 51 former intelligence operatives, senior intelligence officials, former heads of the CIA in both parties who hate Trump, sign a letter.
It was the usual gang of John Brennan and James Clapper and Michael Hayden.
By the way, Michael Hayden I once debated him in Toronto in 2013 as part of a debate about the illegal surveillance that we had revealed during the Snowden reporting.
His partner, Michael Hayden, was Alan Dershowitz.
He had only come out and denounced it because Alan Dershowitz disliked me and my partner was Alexis O'Hanlon, the founder of Reddit, now better known as Serena Williams' husband.
And I encourage you to watch that debate online because one of the things I realized while I was debating him is that Michael Hayden was the director of the NSA, the National Security Agency, on September 11th, which meant he was in charge of this gigantic spying apparatus where we had spent tens of billions of dollars every year to detect what?
Terrorist plots.
And it turned out that the NSA under Michael Hayden was spying on so many people, including domestic dissidents, That somehow they didn't detect this gigantic plot that was conducted over the course of many months in many different countries, including the United States, carried out by dozens of people.
Imagine being the person who was the head of 9-11 or the NSA on 9-11 and knowing that forever you are marked as the person who didn't detect 9-11, even though that was your job to do so.
And you'd be given this gigantic, sprawling spying apparatus.
Obviously, that didn't cost him any reputation.
He ended up running the CIA for George Bush and Dick Cheney after that.
And now he came out as an anti-Trump fanatic, and he's beloved, of course, by liberal establishment.
He's always put on CNN.
So he was one of the people, John Brennan, James Clapper, that signed that letter saying, look, we don't have any evidence for this, but we believe it's like this tingling sensation in our stomachs, in our little tummies, based on all our years of developing expertise in based on all our years of developing expertise in spycraft, that this is probably a Russian operation, a Russian disinformation operation.
And then Politico took that because Natasha Vertran, the ultimate servant of the security state, Was given that first and she published that article, the headline of which was, intelligence agents say this is Russian disinformation.
The headline was a lie.
They didn't actually say it.
They said, we don't know.
We have no evidence.
We think it might be.
And they turned that into, this is Russian disinformation.
And from there, every media outlet in the world repeated over and over with no evidence.
And it turned out to be totally untrue.
That the Hunter Biden laptop was disinformation and then Twitter and Facebook, based on those lies, censored the stories before the election.
Twitter banned it outright.
Facebook algorithmically suppressed it.
To this day, if you mention that fact and the fact of the Hunter Biden laptop and what it ended up revealing, liberals are trained to say, even though they have no idea what they're talking about, but their media has trained them to say things like, oh, well, I'm glad I didn't vote for Hunter Biden then.
Or, oh, well, I guess we shouldn't vote for Hunter Biden in the future.
This snide little comment that's designed to say that whatever is true about the Hunter Biden investigation makes no difference because it has nothing to do with the actions of his father.
That is the propagandistic reflex they embedded in the heads of most followers of the Democratic Party and American liberals.
They say that to this very day and even in light of all this evidence.
Back then, of course, they were convinced that it was Russian disinformation.
They supported the suppressing of the story.
They cheered it.
They claimed it was a lie.
And there was all this evidence that emerged before the election proving that laptop was true.
The documents on the laptop were authentic.
A person named Tony Bobulinski was a longtime partner of Hunter Biden.
He came forward.
He said, here's my telephone.
Here are the emails I got in real time.
They match word for word what's in the archive.
The kind of dispositive proof you look for as a journalist when you're trying to verify large archives.
If you know any liberal in your life, any person who pledges allegiance to the Democratic Party, go ask them, do you know who Tony Bobulinski is?
And I promise you they'll have no idea.
Because their media trained them to laugh at the name Tony Bobulinski.
It's a funny name, Tony Bobulinski.
And it kind of was supposed to represent this right-wing obsession with trivial things, like Benghazi, that they're trained to laugh at.
And under their noses, there was all this evidence that the laptop was authentic.
But the question then becomes, if the laptop really had no incriminating evidence about Joe Biden, why did all these centers of power go to such lengths to try and discredit it and get it censored based on lies that came from the CIA and the corporate media?
And the answer, obviously, was because this laptop had a lot of incriminating evidence about Joe Biden, and it still does.
From the beginning, The story, the first story the New York Post published, which was about Hunter Biden's profiteering in Ukraine, had evidence that he was able to get Joe Biden to meet with members of Burisma as a result of getting those payments.
Why would Burisma pay Hunter Biden $80,000 a month?
If he wasn't able to offer anything in real value in terms of access to his father, of course his father would make himself available, at least enough for Hunter Biden to continue to persuade Burisma that that money was worth paying.
And then in China, the New York Post published a deal memo that referred to 10% of the profits of the deal for the big guy.
And Hunter Biden's business partners, including Tony Wabulinski, testified that that was absolutely reserved for Joe Biden, that that was how Hunter Biden referred to him and other people referred to him as the big guy to avoid mentioning his name.
So before the election, there was ample evidence this laptop was real and that involved not just Hunter Biden, but Joe Biden's role in these sleazy family profiteering schemes.
And yet only conservatives know this.
Democrats, liberals, leftists, they have no idea that any of this happened because the media outlets that they have been trained to listen to have told them this is untrue or just ignored the evidence altogether.
So over the last few months, there has now emerged even more evidence of Joe Biden's involvement in these deals.
After spending two straight years screaming at any member of the media who asked, first accusing them of promoting Russian disinformation, but then when that was proven false, yelling at them and saying, I've never once talked to my son about any business deals, it turns out
That Devin Archer says he was in contact with Devin Archer, he knew about the deals that he was pursuing with Hunter Biden, that Joe Biden got put on the phone many times to speak with Hunter Biden's business associates, including at Burisma.
And unless you believe that Joe Biden got on the phone to talk about the weather, Or that somehow, even though there's all this evidence of Joe Biden's involvement in and knowledge of these deals, he never once talked to Hunter Biden about it.
Unless you're naive to believe that, the evidence of Joe Biden's involvement or at least knowledge of these deals is extremely clear.
Which at the very least means he's been lying for these two years when he keeps adamantly insisting that he never talked to Hunter Biden.
And the White House knows this too under Jen Psaki, under Karine Jean-Pierre.
They have been angrily denying this.
We've told you before, Joe Biden never once spoke with Hunter Biden about his international business deals, and now they've completely changed the denial.
And now they say, we have told you before, Joe Biden was never in business with Hunter Biden.
Completely backtracking on the denial while pretending they haven't.
And if we had a functioning media they would point that out, but of course we don't, so most people don't know this is true.
All of this pressure finally led Merrick Garland today to abandon his long-standing position that a special counsel was unnecessary, that David Weiss had all the authority he needed as U.S.
Attorney, And out of nowhere, Merrick Garland announced today that he was appointing a special counsel.
Here is the written order that came today.
It's titled, Appointment of David C. Weiss as Special Counsel.
And it comes from Merrick Garland, who also, in a press conference, announced this.
We'll show that to you in a second.
And the text of the document reads, quote, in 2019, United States Attorney David C. Weiss, along with federal law enforcement partners, began investigating allegations of certain criminal conduct by, among others, Robert Hunter Biden.
That investigation includes the investigation and prosecution referenced and described in United States versus Robert Hunter Biden.
There you see the criminal case pending in the District of Delaware.
By virtue of the authority vested in the Attorney General, including 28 U.S.C.
509, 10, 15, and 533, in order to discharge my responsibility to provide supervision and management of the Department of Justice, and to ensure a full and thorough investigation of certain matters, I hereby order as follows.
A. David C. Weiss, United States Attorney for the District of Delaware, is appointed to serve as Special Counsel for the Department of Justice.
B, the Special Counsel is authorized to conduct the ongoing investigation described above as well as any matters that arose from that investigation or may arise from the Special Counsel's investigation or that are within the scope of 28 CFR 600.4.
A, the Special Counsel is authorized to prosecute federal crimes in any federal jurisdiction, any federal judicial district arising from investigation of these matters.
And then finally, sections 604 to 10 of Title 28 are applicable to the Special Counsel.
Nothing in this document explains why, suddenly, Merrick Garland's firmly held insistence for years that there was no special counsel necessary has suddenly changed.
Nor is there any discussion of why, instead of doing what normally is done with special counsel, which is going and finding somebody unrelated to the investigation, even somebody outside the government, or outside the auspices of the Justice Department at least, He just took the investigator who has been working on this case for years, a great controversy, whose deal just fell apart upon the minimal amount of judicial scrutiny.
He's been accused by whistleblowers of corruptly interfering in the investigation to limit their work.
Why they poked that person and made them special counsel.
Of course, that's not going to alleviate or appease any of the concerns.
It's going to exacerbate them as it should.
Here's Merrick Garland in a video explaining his, or at least announcing his decision.
...with the Department of Justice regulations governing such matters. In keeping with those regulations, I have today notified the designated members of each House of Congress of the appointment. In February 2018, after being nominated by the former president and confirmed by the Senate, Mr. Weiss was sworn in as the United States Attorney for the District of Delaware.
Mr. Weiss had been a career prosecutor, having served previously in the office for more than a decade.
Beginning in 2019, Mr. Weiss, in his capacity as U.S.
Attorney, and along with federal law enforcement partners, began investigating allegations of certain criminal conduct by, among others, Robert Hunter Biden.
That investigation has been recently referenced in federal criminal proceedings in the District of Delaware, and as noted in those proceedings, and other public statements by Mr. Weiss's office, that investigation remains ongoing.
In February 2021, U.S.
Attorney Weiss was asked to remain as U.S.
Attorney for the District of Delaware and, in that capacity, to continue to lead the investigation.
As I said before, Mr. Weiss would be permitted to continue his investigation, take any investigative steps he wanted, and make the decision whether to prosecute in any district.
Mr. Weiss has told Congress that he has been granted ultimate authority over this matter, including the responsibility for deciding where, when, and whether to file charges, and for making decisions necessary to preserve the integrity of any prosecution consistent with federal law, the principles of federal prosecution, and departmental policies.
In a July 2023 letter to Congress, Mr. Weiss said that he had not to that point requested special counsel designation.
On Tuesday of this week, Mr. Weiss advised me that in his judgment, his investigation had reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel, and he asked to be so appointed.
Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded that it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel.
This appointment confirms my commitment to provide Mr. Weiss all the resources he requests.
It also reaffirms that Mr. Weiss has the authority he needs to conduct a thorough investigation and to continue to take the steps he deems appropriate independently, based only on the facts and the law.
Mr. Weiss will also continue to serve as U.S.
Attorney for the District of Delaware.
A special counsel, he will continue to have the authority and responsibility that he has previously exercised to oversee the investigation and decide where, when, and whether to file charges.
Now you'll notice what is very conspicuously absent from this statement.
An explanation about what powers David Weiss previously had been lacking that he will now have as a result of being made special counsel.
And the reason for that is there's no way to justify that consistent with things they've been saying forever.
They've been saying for the last several years that David Weiss has all the power and authority and resources he needs to conduct a fair investigation of Hunter Biden.
Then why is it That he requested suddenly to be made special counsel.
What will that change?
What does that give him he didn't previously have?
And why is it now necessary or appropriate to make him a special counsel or appoint a special counsel on this case when since 2019, when it has been requested and demanded that a special counsel oversee this case, we were told repeatedly it was unnecessary.
Adamantly told that there's no reason for it.
What changed?
What is it now that makes a special counsel necessary that previously made it unnecessary?
There's no explanation about that at all, even though that's the most obvious question imaginable.
The even more pressing question is if you conclude a special counsel is necessary, which ordinarily is necessary in order to shield an investigation from undue political influences or from the perception of unfairness,
Why would you take the same prosecutor that already is validly accused of conducting this investigation in a very strange way that all of which was designed to help Hunter Biden and make him the special counsel as opposed to all the other hundreds of people from whom you could choose?
Even in terms of public perception, if not reality, that would be the thing you would do if you were actually interested in making this investigation fair.
If what you wanted to do, however, is cast the appearance of fairness while changing nothing or delay the ability for Congress to investigate this by now being able to claim there's an ongoing investigation, a criminal investigation that allows Hunter Biden is cast the appearance of fairness while changing nothing or delay the ability for Congress to investigate this by now being able to claim there's an ongoing investigation, a criminal investigation that allows Hunter Biden to refuse to testify and other a criminal investigation that allows
Such a strange and odd thing to do, especially without any explanation.
Now, as I said, this has been an argument for a long time.
Here, for example, in the New York Times, in August of...
Actually, this is today, explaining what it is that happened...
You see, case against Hunter Biden could go to trial.
The Justice Department elevated the U.S.
attorney and charted the case.
David Weiss, the special prosecutor, Mr. Weiss said in court papers, the case, quote, will not resolve short of trial.
So they're essentially saying, no more possibility of a plea bargain.
Isn't that amazing?
They announced a plea bargain a month ago.
They were adamant that it was fair.
And then it got put before a judge and it crumbled in seconds.
And now they can't get another deal because these prosecutors are now constrained by public attention from doing the sort of thing they had obviously tried to do and planned to do, which was give Hunter Biden an absurdly, unfairly generous offer that the judge took one look at and recognized for what it was.
And now they're saying this thing is going to trial.
So here's the New York Times article, quote, Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday elevated the federal prosecutor investigating President Biden's son Hunter to the status of special counsel after negotiations to revive a plea agreement on tax and gun charges foundered, a signal that the years-long inquiry has entered a new and unpredictable stage.
Mr. Garland, who made the announcement at the Justice Department's headquarters in Washington, Named David C. Weiss, the U.S.
Attorney for Delaware, who has handled the case since 2018 as special counsel.
Around the same time, prosecutors filed court papers indicating that they had reached an impasse with defendants' lawyers over a proposed plea deal that would have settled tax and gun charges made against Hunter Biden, making clear that Mr. Biden might now face a new criminal indictment and a possible trial.
The announcement marked a stunning reversal, I would say, You know this is shocking if the New York Times is calling this a stunning reversal.
Just last month, Mr. Weiss rebutted a claim by a former IRS official that he had asked to be made special counsel.
So the IRS official testified that he had made this request and Garland had rejected it.
They said the IRS agent is lying and now exactly that happened.
Quote, and Mr. Garland scoffed at the idea of appointing him such a post, saying Mr. Weiss actually possessed more power as a sitting U.S.
attorney.
That's what they've been telling us for three years when people have been asking for the appointment of a special counsel.
No, don't worry.
Mr. Weiss has everything he needs.
In fact, he has more power as a sitting U.S.
attorney than he would as a special counsel.
But nobody wanted David Weiss appointed as a special counsel.
People wanted an independent actor, someone trustworthy appointed as a special counsel.
And they just took David Weiss after insisting they would never do that and made him special counsel with no explanation.
Also note that in his The issue was mentioned that the U.S.
I believe he refused to take questions after he walked away like Joe Biden typically does, although Merrick Garland actually seemed to know where he was walking when he was done.
The issue was mentioned that the U.S. Attorney David Weiss requested on Tuesday that he be made special counsel, and Merrick Garland waited until Friday to announce that it was being done.
Friday, of course, is notorious in Washington for being the day that you announce something when you want it buried in the news.
Friday in August is particularly a dead zone.
Everybody leaves early on Friday.
It's summer in Washington and elsewhere.
So you couldn't have picked a better time if you're at Merrick Garland to announce this in a way that would get little attention, further fueling suspicions about Merrick Garland's behavior.
Here's the New York Times, obviously amazed at what has happened here, confused as everybody.
Quote, but on Tuesday, Mr. Weiss, who has come under criticism after his plea deal with Mr. Biden fell apart after a contentious court hearing last month, phoned Mr. Garland to request the authority, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The designation gives him the power to pursue charges in any jurisdiction he chooses without seeking the cooperation of local federal prosecutors.
Why would that be an issue?
Were local federal prosecutors being an impediment previously?
And why were we told that he already has all the power that he needs if he's now saying he needs to be appointed special counsel to carry out this investigation adequately?
Aren't we owed an explanation on that at least?
Mr. Weiss said the investigation had now, quote, reached the stage where the powers of a special counsel were necessary to continue, Mr. Garland said.
Quote, the appointment of Mr. Weiss reinforces for the American people the department's commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters, Mr. Garland said.
I don't think that's going to be the result.
Quote, I am confident that Mr. Weiss will carry out his responsibility in an even-handed and urgent manner and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department.
Mr. Weiss becomes the third special counsel appointed since Mr. Garland took office in March 2021, joining Doc Smith, who is overseeing the investigation into former President Donald J. Trump, and Robert K. Herr, who is examining President Biden's retention of sensitive documents from his tenure as Vice President.
I just don't see an answer to the question, the obvious, extremely glaring question.
of, well, there's really two glaring questions, which is what changed and why David Weiss as special counsel and not somebody else?
Here is the Yahoo News version of events.
Let me just pull that up.
Do we have that Yahoo?
Oh, I guess it's from Huffington Post, actually.
It just appeared on Yahoo News.
So obviously, Huffington Post is a very Democratic oil liberal paper or website.
And here's what they say.
Quote, Merrick Garland insists David Weiss had complete authority to charge Hunter Biden.
So this is also today.
They were reminding us.
Is this from today?
Um, yes it is.
So they're reminding us that David Weiss, that Merrick Garland insisted that David Weiss had complete authority to charge Hunter Biden.
Quote, the country's top cop insisted that the Delaware prosecutor who charged President Joe Biden's son with tax crimes had the power to bring charges however he wanted.
Quote, he was given complete authority to make all decisions on his own, U.S.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference.
A whistleblower previously claimed that Garland's Justice Department so walked An investigation into Hunter Biden's alleged failure to pay taxes, Gary Shapely, a career IRS agent overseeing criminal investigations, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill in May that FBI officials resisted applications for warrants and that David Weiss, the prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden case, claimed he couldn't bring charges in other states without the prosecutor overseeing the Hunter Biden case, claimed he couldn't bring charges in other states without
According to Shapely, Weiss said he was, quote, not the deciding official on whether charges are filed against Hunter Biden in Washington, D.C., and that he was also turned down in California.
Weiss ultimately brought tax and gun charges against Hunter Biden this week in Delaware and said the case is ongoing.
The president's son agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanors for the tax charges and to enter a pretrial diversion program to avoid a federal gun charge.
I think we have this date wrong.
What?
Yeah, so the date of this is not August 11.
The date is June 23rd.
And so just to reset the context, this is the Huffington Post trying to rebut the claims of the IRS whistleblower.
The IRS whistleblower said they were blocked continuously.
They required the permission of local prosecutors to investigate that they were blocked from getting.
And that was the Huffington Post trying to say, if we put the headline back on top, Merrick Garland insists David Weiss had complete authority to charge Hunter Biden.
That was Merrick Garland denying the allegations that the IRS was involved by saying David Weiss was free to do everything he wanted.
And yet now he's saying David Weiss insisted on being appointed special counsel and he agreed to do that because that will give David Weiss all the power he needs, including not having to consult with local prosecutors, which was exactly what the IRS whistleblower said was one of the things impeding the investigation from proceeding.
And it turns out, I guess, that That seems to be true.
Now, Catherine Herridge is one of the few people who ever sound an off-key note within corporate media.
She used to work at Fox News.
She now works at CBS News.
And I find some of her suggestions and speculation about the real motive for Merrick Garland to do what he did today to be very insightful.
And we're all left to speculate because Merrick Garland refused to provide any explanation despite how glaring that question is.
Here's what Catherine Herridge had to say in reporting from the Justice Department after this announcement.
Former federal prosecutor I spoke to just before this event said to me the appointment of a special counsel would have the effect of delaying a resolution on the Hunter Biden matter, in his opinion.
And it would certainly delay any anticipated testimony from the U.S.
attorney in Delaware to Republicans on Capitol Hill who have been seeking that testimony for several months.
So it's an extraordinary development considering where the two parties were Two weeks ago to wrap up this years-long case, now to the appointment of a special counsel that will have these broad authorities, most importantly, to continue this ongoing investigation, Margaret.
Catherine, and it really is interesting given that it was June 7th the U.S.
Attorney said he had ultimate authority and then again had said to Congress that he felt he had that and now this Tuesday says I need some independence to go further into this investigation.
I mean it is amazing even these people in corporate news, not just Catherine Herridge of which I expect it from her, but even that that anchor on CBS News understands that none of this makes sense and that it contradicts everything they've been saying.
And when announcing it happened, Merrick Garland didn't even try and pretend he was addressing that obvious concern.
She's like, you've been telling us for three years he had all the authority that he needed.
Why now are you saying he has to be special counsel?
It contradicts everything they've been saying and it gives complete credence to the allegations of the IRS whistleblower about the various ways in which his authority has been constrained.
Which they all came forward to deny.
Except believing them is the only possible explanation for why this decision could have been made.
House Republicans were predictably cynical about this move, not just refusing to believe that it would give them what they want.
Remember, they had been asking for a special counsel for a long time.
They certainly weren't asking for it to be a person who just got proved to offer Hunter Biden a plea deal that fell apart.
They did want David Weiss to have more power at some point early on and be a point of special counsel.
But obviously, that was well before.
He got caught offering a plea deal to Hunter Biden that was laughable on his face to the point that the judge just kind of scoffed it out of court.
Here is the statement about today's events from Congressman James Comer, who is the head of the Oversight Committee, who, as I've said, I think has been doing a good job, as have half of Republicans in general, of conducting the oversight part of their functions, meaning bringing a lot of this evidence to light.
Here's what he said, quote, This move by Attorney General Garland is part of the Justice Department's efforts to attempt a Biden family cover-up in light of the Republican Oversight Committee's mounting evidence of President Biden's role in his family's scheme selling, quote, the brand for millions of dollars to foreign nationals.
That is absolutely the key context here.
I know liberals will never believe it.
I know Democrats will never believe it.
They listen to MSNBC and CNN.
They think that's the gospel.
The hero, the new hero of the left liberal faction that loves the Democratic Party is Daniel Goldman, the billionaire heir of the Levi Strauss fortune who got elected as a congressman from Manhattan despite never having held office before because his family is good friends with the Sulzberger family that owns the New York Times.
And only in Manhattan is the New York Times endorsement of value any longer, but he was in Manhattan and he got that endorsement and beat multiple other elected officials to get the nomination.
He was also on MSNBC a lot as part of the Mueller team.
And he wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying Devin Archer disproves every single thing that the Republicans were saying, which is, if you listen to Devin Archer's testimony or his interview with Tucker Carlson, you know is completely untrue.
And we're going to show you part of that in a second.
But that's what Democrats have been feeding on, that there's no evidence tying Joe Biden to any of this.
The reality is there's a mountain of evidence suggesting Joe Biden not only was aware of all this in contradiction to the denials he has been making forever and having his underlings make as well, but that he was intending to be a participant in these deals.
And was helping Hunter profit by showing his business associates and the people that were paying him that Hunter did in fact have access to Joe Biden, who was willing to play ball to benefit them.
And of course, we just went over the video where Joe Biden boasted of the fact that he got fired.
He forced the Ukrainians to fire a prosecutor who absolutely was investigating Burisma.
And once that prosecutor was fired, the investigation of Burisma closed.
That is an indisputable fact.
Now, we have a few more things to show you that we think are of crucial value in understanding what happened, and we're going to be right back quickly after this brief announcement to help our show pay for itself.
We'll be right back.
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So there are a few more things that I think are necessary to see in order to complete this picture.
And it is a, I think, increasingly serious one.
And I do think this is going to be a tipping point as well.
You can see already in the tone of the New York Times and even CBS News, which are obviously bellwethers of the liberal media.
That they suspect also that something is untoward here that doesn't really make sense to them.
They're not really known for having very sophisticated or scrutinizing brains, but even for the way their brains are functioning and the eagerness they have to protect Joe Biden and the Democratic Party, even this is a bridge too far apparently for them.
I'm sure they'll be back to Democratic talking points quickly, But the immediate reaction shows that this does not make a lot of sense to them.
So here is a Fox reporter, Dagan McDowell, who raised a point I've seen raised elsewhere.
And I have to say we did not have time to really do the legal research necessary for me to put my stamp of approval on this.
It seems intuitively like it's at least a valid point, though intuitively.
It would take a lot of more judicial, legal research for me to be able to say for sure this is true.
But his point is the following.
Attorney General Merrick Garland violated Department of Justice regulations by appointing David Weiss as special counsel.
Weiss works for Biden's DOJ and thus isn't eligible.
Here's the relevant regulation, section 600.3, which I do believe was the regulation cited by Merrick Garland.
And there you see 600.3, qualification of the special counsel.
Which describes how an individual may be named as special counsel and it says the special counsel shall be selected from outside the U.S.
government.
That's obviously what happened with Robert Mueller.
He was not inside the U.S.
government at the time he was chosen.
I believe Jack Smith was working as the legal representative at The Hague.
He was not inside the Justice Department.
I do believe there have been cases before the special counsel has been somebody inside the government.
So that's why I'm reluctant to endorse this without Doing the necessary research, but certainly it's just the normal course of action.
Because the whole point is you want to immunize the person in charge of the investigation from pressure from the government, and you can't do that if they work for the government.
Only if you bring them on from outside.
I've never seen before, I don't think, now that I can remember.
Somebody who is already investigating a case, the Attorney General deciding they need a special counsel, and then just taking that person who already works in the Justice Department and making them special counsel.
That's what makes no sense.
Now, just to go over a couple of the pieces of evidence that have emerged very recently Regarding Joe Biden's involvement in these transactions, not Hunter Biden's, but Joe's, here from the Sydney Morning Herald, and it was in the New York Times as well, on July 1st, 2003, is the emergence of a WhatsApp message which Hunter Biden sent to Chinese business associates in which he made very clear his father was very involved in the deal and was angry that the money hadn't yet arrived.
There the headline is, could Hunter Biden's threatening WhatsApp message cost his father the White House?
Two days after pleading guilty to tax crimes, Hunter Biden walked into a State Department dinner at the White House.
His presence didn't go unnoticed.
Quote, when Hunter Biden walked into a state dinner at the White House last week, two days after he reached a contentious plea deal that will allow him to avoid jail over tax and gun crimes, or so they thought, his presence didn't go unnoticed.
There he was, the president's son, fresh from being accused of getting preferential treatment by the Federal Justice Department, confidently hobnobbing with attendees at a glitzy all-vegetarian dinner for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Tensions on Capitol Hill erupted last week when IRS agent Gary Shapley came forward to publicly claim that decisions in the case appeared to be, quote, influenced by politics.
From, quote, slow walking investigative steps to, quote, limiting investigators line of questioning for key witnesses.
In a particularly explosive allegation disclosed to Congress, Shapley also said the IRS obtained a WhatsApp message dated July 30th, 2017 from Hunter Biden to Henry Zhao, a Chinese Communist Party official and chief executive at Beijing-based firm Harvest Management Funds.
This is what Hunter wrote in that message, quote, I am sitting here with my father, and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled, the text message purportedly said.
Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight.
And Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me, meaning my father, and every person he knows, and my ability to forever hold a grudge, You will regret not following my direction.
I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.
The WhatsApp text was politically sensitive because it added fuel to the Republicans' yet-to-be-proven theory that the Biden family are a hotbed of corruption from nepotism to sweetheart deals to influence peddling.
Here from the AP, August 4th, 2023.
Testimony from Hunter Biden associates provides new insight into their business dealings.
Quote, focusing on the Bidens rather than Donald Trump's federal court appearances, House Republicans released a transcript Thursday of their interview with Hunter Biden's former business associate detailing overseas financial dealings by the president's son.
The more than five-hour closed-door interview with Devin Archer by the House Oversight Committee, released hours before Trump's appearance to face a third list of charges, provides fresh insight into how... Do you see how they load up every article with talking about Trump, even though it's totally irrelevant?
provides fresh insight into how President Joe Biden's youngest son used his relationship with his father, who is then Vice President, to court foreign investors.
Archer said Hunter Biden was using, quote, the illusion of access in Washington.
Republicans on the panel hope to use their work to prod impeachment proceedings against the president.
However, though pressed repeatedly, Archer offered no tangible evidence that Joe Biden's role in his son's work was more than saying hello during their daily family calls.
Now, Again, given the years of steadfast denials that Joe Biden ever had any knowledge of or talked to Hunter about these business deals, the fact that he's now participating in his son's business deals and saying hello on the phone to his business associates,
Why would Joe Biden do that except to fuel the appearance that they should keep paying Hunter Biden because Hunter Biden has access to Joe, who will happily help them with their problems like he did when he intervened on a micromanaging level to get rid of the prosecutor in Ukraine.
Here is Devin Archer on August 2nd being interviewed by Tucker Carlson.
You can see what he says about all of this.
Biden, then the sitting vice president, knew that there were Hunter's business associates in the room.
Yeah, I think I can definitively say at particular dinners or meetings, he knew there were business associates.
Or if I was there, I was a business associate, too.
So I think, or if any of the other colleagues from the DC office or the New York office were there.
So yeah, at times there were.
To be completely clear on the calls, I don't know if it was an orchestrated call in or not.
It certainly was powerful, though, because Yeah, it's pretty impactful.
It's obviously something Joe Biden understood.
He didn't just get on the phone for fun.
He didn't think he was talking to his kid's friends.
Pretty impactful.
It's obviously something Joe Biden understood.
He didn't just get on the phone for fun.
He didn't think he was talking to his kids' friends.
His kid's not 12.
He's somebody desperately in need of money, making a ton of money.
Coincidentally, in the country that Joe Biden is running for the Obama administration, which is Ukraine, Pursuing profit deals in China, where Joe Biden has enormous influence, both as a former vice president and as someone likely or possibly going to be the future president.
Someone you would, of course, want to curry favor with through business transactions and deals and money.
So this whole thing they train liberals to say before the 2020 election and since, Hunter Biden's irrelevant, he's not on the ballot, who cares if Hunter Biden's corrupt?
The evidence is now overwhelmingly clear that Joe Biden had at least the kind of knowledge he spent years falsely denying.
And I go back to that laptop.
For all the claims that it has nothing incriminating on it, there certainly were a lot of very powerful people desperate to discredit it and suppress it before the election.
Something it's very strange to do if it has nothing incriminating on it about Joe Biden.
And whatever else is true, we now have these developments in Washington so bizarre that even the members of the corporate media can't defend it without admitting they're confused.
That Joe Biden's personal appointee, Merrick Garland, finally has appointed a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden in a move that makes absolutely no sense.
Absent a desire to further delay these proceedings, to give David Weitz an excuse not to testify, to ensure that it prolongs through at least the election.
And continue to stymie and stifle the attempt to find out the real truth here.
They're trying to make it seem like they're finally going to go after Hunter Biden in a real way.
And if you're Joe Biden, I kind of wonder, I was just thinking to myself about this when we had the break.
Maybe if you really love your son as much as you say, maybe you would say, you know what, it's not worth it to keep pursuing this re-election.
I can retire because if I don't, they're going to come after my son and put him in prison.
But Joe Biden is somebody who's been around Washington since he's 29.
He's been in politics his whole life.
He's been a senator.
He's ran for president multiple times.
He's desperate and hungry for power.
He's not going to do that.
But it has the appearance by design of making you convinced that they're finally going to take action and shield this investigation.
Although on the face it makes no sense.
They can't provide an explanation for this bizarre behavior of spending years denying that a special counsel was needed only to now appoint one and more bizarrely still picking the person under this cloud of suspicion.
It's not going to assuage suspicions.
It's going to raise them further and it should.
Because what we know for certain is that the person who was just made special counsel is the same person who gave Hunter Biden a bizarre, unprecedented, and insanely generous deal that crumbled soon as it got the light of day.
That is the last person who would be special counsel if your goal were actually to make the investigation fair.
But he's the first person you would pick if your goal were the opposite.
So that concludes our show for this evening.
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