The latest development in the ongoing investigations into Hunter Biden and his foreign business dealings came on Friday when Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he appointed U.S. attorney David Weiss as special counsel in the probe.
You may recognize the name because Weiss had been leading the prosecution in the cases of Hunter’s tax and gun charges. He brokered the sweetheart plea deal that dramatically fell apart after U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika raised multiple concerns about the specifics of the agreement last month.
On Monday’s show, Megyn was joined by former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, author of March to the Majority, to discuss Weiss’ appointment and why it creates more questions than answers.
David Weiss Named Special Counsel
Garland did not provide much in the way of explanation when he announced Weiss’ special counsel status last week, but it comes some five years after the Trump-appointed attorney began the investigation into the first son.
In the past, IRS whistleblowers who worked on the case and Republicans in Congress have suggested Weiss be elevated to special counsel because, as the U.S. attorney in Delaware, he couldn’t pursue charges in other jurisdictions. At every turn, Garland and Weiss insisted he had the purview he needed. Yet in a televised statement, the attorney general said Weiss informed him on Tuesday that the “investigation has reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel.”
Megyn was not buying it. “He is so dishonest,” she said. “He’s just brushing by the actual history between those two and what they’ve said publicly because he realizes people are living their lives and not parsing through their previous statements.” Gingrich agreed. “The whole thing is such an act of utter contempt for all the rest of us that it’s, I think, kind of astonishing,” he said.
In Gingrich’s view, Weiss is ineligible to be a special counsel because the role must be filled by “somebody coming from outside of the Justice Department.” Additionally, Weiss’ credibility has been undermined due to his handling of the case thus far. Calling Weiss’ work “a comedy act,” the former House speaker pointed out that Weiss allowed the statute of limitations on some of Hunter’s “biggest tax problems” to expire. “If that was done in the private sector, he would have been sued for malpractice,” Gingrich said.
And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. “This is a guy whose plea deal was so bad that it collapsed in court,” he added. “This is a guy who’s managed to avoid prosecuting Hunter Biden despite the fact that the FBI has had the laptop since 2019 and people know there are a whole range of good reasons for prosecuting him.”
Why Now?
Garland said he granted Weiss’ request to be named special counsel after he reviewed “the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter” and “concluded it is in the public interest” to make the appointment. Many have speculated that the timing may have something to do with the dissolution of the plea deal and the fact that GOP-led House committees were planning to call on Weiss to testify this fall.
“I think part of it is that that Weiss is beginning to realize that he’s going to have to actually try Hunter Biden, that they’re not going to get to a plea deal,” Gingrich said. “I also think that they’re going to try to use this to shield Weiss from testifying.” Recent special counsels like Robert Mueller and John Durham only testified on the Hill after their reports were released. Weiss’ report could be years away.
As questions continue to swirl around Garland and whether or not he lied to Congress about the authority Weiss had been granted, some are wondering if the appointment is an admission of sorts. “It’s sort of an admission, if you read it, that the critics have been right all along,” Megyn noted. “He did not empower David Weiss and both of them have been misleading us about it.”
And then there is the timing element. “Just as David Weiss was going to have to go and do the full-throated under oath testimony about whether he went to the U.S attorneys – which we know he did in California and D.C. – and asked them to prosecute charges only to get stiff armed and not be able to bring those charges and then the statute of limitations expired right as he was going to have to do all that, he gets this new title,” Megyn explained. “All of this tells me that he’s in Merrick Garland’s pocket.”
Gingrich believes the DOJ is trying to “run the clock out” and ensure Hunter’s case does not go to trial before the 2024 election. That tactic, he said, bolsters the argument that there is a two-tiered system of justice.
“Part of what makes this all so difficult is that the scale of both Biden corruption and Department of Justice corruption is so enormous,” he concluded. “The double standard is now so blatantly obvious that historians will someday write about it, I think, with a sense of awe that they really thought the American people were so stupid that they could have this kind of open hypocrisy and not pay for it.”
You can check out Megyn’s full interview with Gingrich by tuning in to episode 607 on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch The Megyn Kelly Show live on SiriusXM’s Triumph (channel 111) weekdays from 12pm to 2pm ET.