The Hunter Biden DOJ protection program
U.S. Department of Justice officials deliberately delayed an investigation into Hunter Biden’s potential tax law violations and sketchy overseas business dealings because of the effect it could have on the presidential election, according to a Politico report.
Delaware’s U.S. Attorney David Weiss allegedly postponed allowing prosecutors to obtain search warrants and issue grand jury subpoenas last summer, after facing pressure from other officials who feared the investigation’s influence on the 2020 presidential election and now-President Joe Biden’s campaign.
And if we didn’t already know the details, we certainly could have and should have deduced the basic outline. I certainly imagined the investigation had been stalled for political reasons. It’s sad when our default position is extreme distrust of our leftist-partisan government institutions, agencies, and officials.
Are we in the Now It Can Be Told phase of the Hunter Biden story? For example [my emphasis]:
“They advised [Hunter] to avoid taking any actions that could alert the public to the existence of the case in the middle of a presidential election,” reported Politico, one of the many corporate media outlets that [had] brushed off the possibility of any wrongdoing by Hunter despite the discovery of his incriminating laptop.
The protection was activated:
Shortly before Election Day, prosecutors and then-Attorney General Bill Barr worked together to keep the investigation from going fully public and decided not to appoint a special investigator for the case.
I’m in agreement with this:
DOJ’s only purpose anymore is to protect the ruling regime’s friends and persecute the regime’s political enemies. It is corrupt and unsalvageable. https://t.co/A9VACBt4hN
— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) July 16, 2021
But I have a few questions: why is Politico reporting on this, even now? Are they offended that the DOJ protected Hunter and Joe? I very much doubt it. Or are they trying to get ahead of a story – meaning, is Hunter about to be indicted for something? Neither of these explanations seems quite satisfactory to me, but I can’t come up with any others.
Also: is there anything to be done about the DOJ? If the DOJ is so hopelessly corrupt (which I believe it is), could any Republican president effectively reform it? I have very strong doubts. It would involve getting a Republican president in there who is willing to fire nearly everyone and hire an entirely new crew, and even then it would be very difficult to find enough lawyers who are dedicated to objectively applying the law.
[NOTE: Remember the DOJ’s treatment of Hillary Clinton’s emails?]
By ruling regime he means Democrat politicians and Democrat government employees.
They certainly never protect Republicans even when they are theoretically in control.
Any coverage of Hunter Biden by the media now is strictly CYA reporting. “Yes we covered Hunter Biden!”
Hunter is safe and sound to do the thing he does best. Sell influence. If it froze in hell and DOJ went after Hunter the whole family would go to jail. That’s not going to happen even after Joe is out of office.
Here’s Ace of Spades take on this:Fed up!
http://ace.mu.nu/archives/394779.php
But why should a friend of St Hillary be dealt with any differently than Hillary herself? “Laws are for the little people.”
So many institutions and people in whom I used to have confidence, gone! FBI, CIA, DOJ, CDC, NIH, — Bill Barr!
prosecutors and then-Attorney General Bill Barr
The smart money says Barr won’t deign to acknowledge this. If he were on the level, there would be a forthright denial.
While suspending judgment on this, the evidence that accumulates suggests Barr’s objects were to prevent Mueller from abject humiliation, prevent the abusive and conniving Andrew Weissmann from securing a ridiculous self-licking ice-cream cone indictment of the president for obstructing Weismann’s obstruction investigation, and prevent a real reformer from cleaning out the augean stable that is the Justice Department. Here’s a suggestion for the next Republican president: if they worked for the Bushes, roundfile that resume.
“Here’s a suggestion for the next Republican president: if they worked for the Bushes, roundfile that resume.” Agreed!
It would involve getting a Republican president in there who is willing to fire nearly everyone and hire an entirely new crew, and even then it would be very difficult to find enough lawyers who are dedicated to objectively applying the law.
Wow. How many good lawyers are we talking about? I’ve been outstripped in my cynicism. Which is not a reflexive cynicism on my part or Neo’s.
J. Christian Adams blew the whistle on the civil rights div.(?) of the DOJ many years ago. I think it was the early days of Eric Holder when Adams quit, though I think it wasn’t too healthy for a while before that.
TommyJay:
Enough probably exist, if one had an objectivity detector and could comb the entire country for them and somehow commandeer them into service. That’s not possible.
Plus, most lawyers are on the left these days. This wasn’t always the case, but it began in the 60s when law was considered (like journalism) a force for changing the world to the progressive point of view. And then legal education itself became skewed to the left, and that has been true for decades.
Wow. How many good lawyers are we talking about?
I believe the US attorney’s offices employ about 1,300 lawyers and handle 95% of the department’s caseload. Satisfactory lawyers will do. Don’t want evil Andrew Weissmann types thinking creatively.
One thing that needs to be done is to scarify the federal criminal code.
http://verdantlabs.com/politics_of_professions/
This suggests that about 3/4 of those in law offices vote Democratic. I’m wagering Republicans are more likely to be support staff, paralegals, and small practice lawyers.
Bill Barr is rapidly rising on my list of most despised deep staters. John Brennan has been at the top of the list for quite some time but I might have to rethink things. I was once naive enough to believe Barr was serious about investigating the corruption at the Justice Department and the intelligence agencies. He played a lot of people for suckers.
This is like a horror movie where after you discover a series of grisly murders, you notify the police only to realize that they are covering up for the killers and they lock you up instead. You then make a miraculous escape and notify the FBI about the murders and the police corruption and then find out that the FBI is in on it too.
I’ll speculate on why this is coming out now…
Because when nothing…nothing…nothing happens to Crack Head Son of a Biden we’ll have had it shoved in our faces yet again that the regime that stole the election, & has thus far gotten away with it, has nothing to fear & can do whatever it damn well pleases.
They’re just trolling us now.
But no mean tweets…amirite?
Hunter will never see a day inside a jail cell, nor a day in criminal court.
Thanks Neo and Art,
Yes, there are enough scrupulously ethical lawyers if you can find them and filter out the pretenders. Art’s number is about quadruple the first number that popped into my head. Not surprising. The leviathan.
Doesn’t the DOJ have a longstanding policy of trying not to influence political campaigns with criminal prosecutions? Barr strikes me as an institutionalist first, which is why he was initially so exercised about what Mueller and Weissman were doing.
The Hunter Biden issue was particularly fraught this year because the press/big tech lied about it and it was the subject of an impeachment. There’s also a whopping double standard with state and local prosecutors going after Trump during the campaign.
Beyond all that, though, are we really comfortable with having the DOJ disclose these investigations during campaigns? The potential for abuse is high.
????
Where is the infamous laptop these days? FBI, DOJ, Hunter, Sleepy Joe … who has it?
All the DOJ has to do is verify the laptop is Hunters … the laptop does the rest of the case itself!
@John Guilfoyle:
“They’re just trolling us now.
But no mean tweets…amirite?”
Yep. Pretty much. Good deal of hubris. But doesn’t mean that their smarter cooler more evil genius heads are not hoovering up the negative reaction sentiment response data and making proscription lists.
I am beginning to understand why in the Old Testament, once Israel would reach a certain level of debasement, another power would be allowed to come in and really mess with them.
Societies get to the point that they can not or will not be salvaged without major upheaval .
Doesn’t the DOJ have a longstanding policy of trying not to influence political campaigns with criminal prosecutions?
I doubt it extended to refusing for an entire year to compel the production of evidence. Let Ted Stevens’ five surviving children know that federal prosecutors never try to influence campaigns with criminal prosecutions. I’m sure they’ll be pleased.
}}} “…averting the possibility that this would become a months-long campaign issue…”
Because, you know, BLATANT CORRUPTION on the part of a PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE… Naw, that couldn’t possibly be in any way at all relevant to the plebiscite… right?
>:-(
The DOJ had a simple choice. Allow a President to be elected who had a long history of corruption and perpetuate the rot at the core of the United States, or prevent it. They chose.
Art Deco makes the point I consider most important: somehow a policy of “not affecting a campaign” only seems to be important when it hurts Democrats.
And, clearly, failing to pursue criminal investigations where warranted (unlike, say, Russian Dossiers), is also “affecting a campaign.”
Funny how that works.
Maybe they should just do their jobs and quit looking at how it affects any candidate or campaign. Period.