President-elect Joe Biden has long accused President Trump of wanting the Department of Justice to act like a team of personal lawyers.
Now, Biden is under political pressure to practice what he’s preached as he prepares to take office on Jan. 20, while his son Hunter, 50, is under federal investigation.
The Bidens released explosive statements through the incoming president’s transition aides this month acknowledging federal prosecutors from the United States Attorney’s Office in Delaware were working with the IRS and FBI to look at Hunter’s foreign business dealings and potential tax law violations.
Then the New York Times reported two days later that Hunter Biden was also being scrutinized by federal prosecutors in Pittsburgh, but with a line of inquiry based on materials supplied by Trump ally Rudy Giuliani.
While Trump supporters complain the investigations were kept secret until after the Nov. 3 election, the timing still isn’t ideal for Joe Biden. He’s in the middle of his search for an attorney general as he staffs up his administration before his inauguration.
“No. I guarantee you; I’m going to do what I said. The attorney general of the United States of America is not the president’s lawyer. I will appoint someone who I expect to enforce the law as the law is written, not guided by me,” Biden told reporters Tuesday in Wilmington, Delaware, when asked whether he’d raised the topic of his son during his conversations with his candidates.
But for Bud Cummins, a former Arkansas U.S. attorney appointed by President George W. Bush, it’s really only Biden’s word and DOJ norms that are binding the two-term vice president to his promise not to interfere in the investigations, which could lead to the criminal prosecution of his son.
“I don’t know that there’s mechanisms in place that would make it impossible for them to kill the investigation into, let’s forget Hunter Biden, any investigation,” he told the Washington Examiner.
Cummins explained how U.S. attorneys and their DOJ colleagues had “tremendous authority” to stop an inquiry if they so wished.
“If a president were able to persuade an attorney general to send the order downstream to cease a certain investigation, I think in a lot of circumstances that investigation would cease,” he said.
Resignations could signal dissent, according to Cummins. Or they could be evidence of pressure being exerted on people unwilling to follow the order because “everybody in the chain of command pretty much serves at the pleasure of the president,” he added.
“It’s just, how much criticism is a president willing to absorb for ordering people to do something that they may not want to do and risking people stepping up and resigning out of principle?” Cummins said, citing former President Richard Nixon’s infamous Saturday Night Massacre of Justice Department officials during the Watergate scandal.
Traditionally, new U.S. attorneys inherit old investigations from their predecessors. Trump’s 2017 dismissal of Preet Bharara, for example, didn’t halt inquiries into Trump associates in New York. But in some cases, the replacement can “reestablish priorities” or “examine ongoing investigations and make discretionary calls” about it, or whether it should even continue, Cummins went on.
David Weiss is Delaware’s Trump-appointed U.S. attorney. His team’s investigation into Hunter Biden started in 2018, before his father announced his 2020 White House campaign. It initially focused on the younger Biden’s dealings in China and Ukraine through natural gas company Burisma Holdings. While his exposure to money laundering charges seems to have waned, the inquiry is reportedly homing in on possible tax law violations. Neither Biden has been charged with a crime.
Scott Brady’s parallel investigation in Pittsburgh was prompted by outgoing Attorney General Bill Barr, the New York Times found. Barr asked Brady in January to vet information Giuliani had on Hunter Biden after the former New York City mayor spent the previous year looking for dirt on Trump’s political rivals, specifically the Bidens in Ukraine. Trump’s interest in Giuliani’s findings provoked him to urge the Ukrainian government to launch its own inquiry, a request that eventually led to his impeachment.
Both investigations had been covertly conducted until the Nov. 3 election, in line with DOJ guidance that advises against overt actions before an election that could affect the vote if they ever became public. But now that Nov. 3 has passed, subpoenas have been issued and interviews sought.
Jen Psaki, the next White House press secretary, was pressed about the investigations during an interview with Fox News and declined to commit on Biden’s behalf to keeping Weiss in place amid his inquiry.
“It will be up to the purview of a future attorney general and his administration to determine how to handle any investigation,” she said.
Some Republicans have suggested Barr’s interim successor, Jeff Rosen, appoint a special counsel to shield the investigations from Biden’s influence.
Regardless of what Joe Biden does, Senate Republicans are expected to pursue any allegations with respect to Hunter Biden if they hang onto their majority after Georgia’s Jan. 5 runoffs. Biden has dismissed his opponents’ questions about his son.
“We have great confidence in our son. I’m not concerned about any accusations that have been made against him. It’s used to get to me. I think it’s kind of foul play, but look, it is what it is,” he told CBS last week.
