August 13, 2023

House Republicans have been screeching that they wanted a special counsel appointed in the Hunter Biden probe, and they're screaming bloody murder now that they've gotten what they wanted. Former lead counsel in the Trump impeachment and now New York Rep. Dan Goldman was asked about the whining by CNN's Jake Tapper this Sunday, and Goldman did a fine job taking apart their talking points and explaining exactly why the plea deal fell apart.

TAPER: So, House Republicans say, and we kind of heard former Congressman Will Hurd say something similar just now, hey, U.S. Attorney Weiss, he may be a Trump appointee but also is the one that signed off on this slap of the wrist, sweetheart deal, their words, not mine, when it came to Hunter Biden being charged with with two misdemeanors and a diversion program instead of full felony charges. Therefore, Speaker McCarthy and other Republicans say David Weiss can't be trusted to be the special counsel. What do you say to that?

GOLDMAN: Well, no one knows what the evidence is, so when they say this is a sweetheart deal, they are blowing smoke because they have no idea. And so this is, to my mind, having been a federal prosecutor for ten years, not at all a sweetheart deal. This is something is routinely treat treated in a civil way, through civil penalties, not criminally.

And yet Hunter Biden was charged with crimes. This is a five-year investigation. They looked at everything. We know that from testimony in the Oversight Committee. They had foreign bank records. They had domestic bank records. They had hundreds of thousands of documents. and this is ultimately what they thought they could charge.

Now in the ordinary course, you would not give immunity for other conduct than what is charged. But this is not the ordinary course, because you have a petty, vindictive bully running for president on the Republican party who will use revenge and weaponize the Department of Justice to potentially charge Hunter Biden.

So even though I’m sure Hunter Biden has confidence that David Weiss will not charge him with additional crimes, they have no confidence that if Donald Trump wins that he would weaponize the Department of Justice to charge Hunter Biden, go back and charge him.

And that’s why this plea agreement has broken down, because of the threat of Donald Trump’s weaponization of the Department of Justice if he were to become president.

Goldman also dismantled the GOP's arguments that Hunter Biden somehow benefited from any official actions that his father took while in office:

TAPPER: Devon Archer, Hunter Biden's business partner, told you in closed-door testimony that Hunter would put his father on speakerphone with, while he was meeting with his business associates, and this happened at least twenty times. and Archer told you that Hunter would use these calls to send signals to his business partners, to create the impression that his father was involved and helpful to his business even, you're right, as there has been no establishment of any facts that Joe Biden did anything as vice president or president relatedly. But shouldn't President Biden have realized what Hunter was doing here, getting on the phone, talking on speakerphone with his business associates, did he at the very least show a major lapse of judgment and a blind spot with his son and how he handled this?

GOLDMAN: Look, I think that same witness also made very clear that they never discussed business, that Hunter Biden was trying to promote an illusion to his father for his own reasons. That's Hunter Biden and you can make whatever judgment you want to make about whether that was appropriate or not, but the president saying hello to people when his son puts them on the phone is not at all doing anything to influence any policy, to use his position for any nefarious purposes.

And in fact, what we do know is that the only official action the president took related to Hunter Biden's business interests was detrimental to Hunter Biden's company's business interest. It was detrimental to Burisma as Devon Archer, this new star witness for the Republicans said, because Burisma had the corrupt prosecutor general quote, and I quote the witness, under control, and that that was a good thing for that prosecutor general to be in office, and yet Joe Biden urged Ukraine, the Ukrainian government, to fire that prosecutor general. That's the only connection that President Biden had with any of hunter's business dealings.

That won't stop Republicans from continuing to lie day in and day out about what Archer said during his testimony, or the whataboutism from the media that was on display here.

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