Immediately after the announcement by Attorney General Merrick Garland that Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss had requested to be appointed Special Counsel, news cameras caught up with Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) at the Iowa State Fair for his take. Fox News didn’t catch the first few words of his statement, but here is a transcription of the rest:
…[a] year ago we sent a letter saying we should have a Special Counsel. So the short answer to your question is, it’s about time. On the other hand, I have some question about Weiss doing it, because Johnson and I sent all of this material that we had from the Cathay Bank in regard to the payments that were made to Hunter Biden, and we don’t know what they did with them, and we know from the IRS whistleblowers that they never did anything with the 1023 document that I got released. So you just wonder how thorough Weiss is doing it.
And then you have this plea agreement that fell through, and there’s speculation now that the Justice Department can’t work out another plea agreement, so they’re gonna have to go to trial. So is the special counsel set up to interfere with going to a trial right away, or are they ready to – there’s some other reason for doing it.
And since this administration has exemplified so much political bias in the FBI and the Department of Justice, I think there’s reasons to raise questions. You can’t do one thing for a Democrat and another thing for a Republican, because the constitution requires equal — equal justice.
Mediaite clipped the interview but they don’t provide a way to embed it here, and Fox News hasn’t made it available either on their site or on YouTube. I’m only linking to Mediaite so our readers can view the video themselves and not take my word for what Grassley said, but the way Mediaite has framed this is, as usual, terrible.
Grassley has since issued a formal statement from his office declaring that Weiss isn’t the right person for the Special Counsel job and pledging to keep up his investigations in the Senate. His statement reads:
Since at least 2019, the FBI and Justice Department have possessed glaring evidence of criminality involving the Biden family’s business ventures. Despite repeated assurances that U.S. Attorney Weiss had full authority and independence to pursue all the facts, whistleblowers and a botched sweetheart plea deal told a much different story. Given the underhanded plea deal negotiated by the U.S. Attorney from President Biden’s home state, it’s clear Mr. Weiss isn’t the right person for the job.
The special counsel has a duty to pursue all the facts and provide greater transparency about the true scope of his review. There’s no longer any excuse to ignore critical details that were left out of the plea deal – many of which have long been in the public domain. I’ll continue to pursue the facts as I have for years, and Congress is not going to tolerate further delay tactics and obstructive conduct by the Justice Department.
Garland’s appointment of Weiss is one of the slimier things that’s occurred during his tenure, and that’s saying a lot. Weiss has intentionally ignored evidence, cut investigators out of briefings, and then took them off the case. And we don’t know for sure yet, but it sure seems like Weiss was calling the shots to not bring criminal charges against Hunter Biden (at least until the IRS whistleblowers forced his hand) and to keep investigators away from Joe Biden, while claiming that it was “Main DOJ” telling him what he had to do. It seems like we’re all involved in a real-life “Who’s on First” scam being perpetrated by Merrick Garland and David Weiss, designed to keep responsibility shifting and accountability from occurring until the clock has completely run down.
