Last week, when Garland announced Weiss and his new legal authority, Republicans wisely smelled a political rat. Weiss is the assistant U.S. attorney whose office got caught offering the president’s son the now-famous “sweetheart deal” plea agreement in which he would not be charged for future crimes that are uncovered. He has also been accused by IRS whistleblowers who told Congress he hindered their investigations.
“I smell a trap,” Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn), reacting to Garland's announcement, said last week.
That is because the House Oversight Committee Rep. Burchett sits on says it is has pieced together a criminal enterprise with fake overseas companies that sent tens of millions of dollars to the Biden family while Joe Biden served as vice president.
Michael J. O'Neill, vice president of legal affairs at Landmark Legal Foundation, agrees with the red flags that went up last week. There are a lot of problems with appointing Weiss as a special counsel, he says, and very first problem is it’s not allowed.
"The Department of Justice regulations specify that a special counsel needs to come from outside the Department of Justice,” O’Neill points out, “so that a prosecutor can have impartiality, can have fresh eyes, can approach this from an objective perspective.”
On the surface, it appears the DOJ is wiling to violate its own rules to protect the Biden family but he wonders if there is more politics at play than that. Since the current president is 80, and the signs of age are evident, the attorney wonders if Weiss would push the president out of office if given the order to do some from the Democratic Party.
“I think that's something you really have to consider going forward,” O’Neill concludes, “considering the fact that every single time he is out in the public sphere, you just see somebody who is not up for serving as president of the United States or competing in a presidential election."
