Hunter Biden, David Weiss, and the right’s perpetual bad-faith scandal machine – By Matt Gertz (Media Matters) / Aug 14, 2023
You can’t satisfy paid grievance-mongers
There’s simply no reason for reporters to give credence to the Republicans and right-wing media figures currently rending their garments over Attorney General Merrick Garland’s grant of special counsel powers to David Weiss, the prosecutor investigating President Joe Biden’s son.
The right’s interest in Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes begins and ends with whether they can use him to harm his father’s reelection campaign. They are willing to pretend to be mad that Weiss wasn’t appointed special counsel — and then get mad that he was; for political gain, they’re even willing to pretend to care about tax crimes after years of trying to defang the Internal Revenue Service’s ability to target tax cheats. But reporters covering their responses don’t have to play along with this charade.
Weiss, a U.S. attorney first appointed by former President Donald Trump and retained by President Biden, has been investigating Hunter Biden for five years. The probe has overlapped with a storm of spurious right-wing claims that foreign actors had used Hunter Biden’s business interests to bribe his father. In June, Weiss charged Hunter Biden with two misdemeanor counts of failure to pay taxes and one count of felony gun possession as part of a plea agreement; the agreement fell apart during a court hearing and Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty. On Friday, Garland announced that Weiss had requested special counsel status and he had granted it after talks to revive the plea deal failed.
