Garland appoints special counsel for Hunter Biden probe...

Same guy who tried to provide blanket immunity to Hunter previously is now in charge of special counsel.

Now there are two ways of looking at this. One would be that David Weiss should have been given special counsel status from the beginning if he was leading the investigation. The other way to see this is that the same guy who has been investigating him for years without pressing any charges should not be the one still heading the case. This doesn't appear like a real appointment.

Prior to the actual announcement, Andrew McCarthy wades in on what everyone expected to be the announcement of a special counsel to look into Hunter (and by proxy Joe) Biden.

These were his issues:

First, is the appointee a former prosecutor from outside the government (as the regs require) who has a reputation for non-partisan scrupulousness and rigor in enforcing the law?

Second, is the appointee a new broom that sweeps clean? That is, will the special counsel bring in a new staff to take a fresh look at the Biden scandal, or will he or she just be a figurehead who creates the illusion of detachment from Biden Justice Department supervision but actually retains the same Biden Justice Department lawyers? (As I noted earlier in the week, the Mar-a-Lago documents case is still being run by Jay Bratt, the same Biden Justice Department official who investigated it prior to the special-counsel appointment of Jack Smith.)

Third, will the special counsel be given a sweeping mandate to investigate and prosecute any and all crimes uncovered in an inquiry into the Biden family influence-peddling business (much like Garland gave Jack Smith a sweeping mandate to investigate Donald Trump for document-retention crimes, post-2020-election crimes, and any other crimes discovered during the probe)? Or will Garland draw a narrow remit that limits the special counsel to Hunter Biden’s tax and gun crimes?

Well quite obviously the appointment of the same guy who has been investigating for years and ended up offering full immunity in exchange for nothing does not qualify for any of these conditions. To rub salt in the wound, the DOJ has suggested that they will not try any cases in Delaware (where Hunter was first charges\d), and instead are highly likely to move the case to D.C. where there is basically zero chance of any conviction of anything.

This is a political move designed to make it look like the DOJ is taking this seriously, when in fact it is exactly the opposite. They waited until almost everything is beyond the statute of limitations and then appointed the same guy who has already failed to bring any charges. This is exactly the opposite of calling in Jack Smith from Australia to head the Trump probe knowing full well that Smith would charge Trump with anything and everything he could think of as quickly as possible.

Obviously this is also designed to choke off the current congressional investigations that are hitting way too close to home. With a special counsel, they can probably make better legal arguments in squelching the committees investigations.

We will need to wait for details before we know the scope of Weiss's special counsel status.

Now Weiss could prove everyone wrong.

As McCarthy has suggested; the first thing any competent Special counsel would do is sit a grand jury and indict Hunter on literally everything that is not beyond the statute of limitations so that charges can be brought before things expire on time. If Weiss does anything but... well we all know that the fix is in.