It would be tremendously inappropriate for President Trump to force the naming of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, son of the president-elect. However, it might be advisable for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell jointly to ask the acting attorney general to do so — or to take some other step to ensure that the current investigation into Biden’s son remains uncorrupted.
It’s not that career employees can’t do the job. As noted, Hunter Biden is already under Justice Department investigation. From all appearances, he deserves to be investigated. His international business dealings, especially in China, have been ethically questionable for years. Also, completely apart from legalities, the web of his dealings and those of his uncle Jim should somehow be unwound, because, otherwise, they could put stress on the nation’s diplomatic interests.
Either way, now that Hunter’s father is going to be president, public confidence in the legitimacy and thoroughness of the investigation surely would increase if it were shielded from interference by President-elect Joe Biden’s incoming political appointees. Appearances are important. If Hunter Biden is exonerated, it should not look as if he is skating because his father wanted a cover-up.
On the other hand, it also shouldn’t look as if prosecution is occurring just because Trump personally picked an Inspector Javert to target him. Nor, of course, would that be fair to Hunter Biden himself, nor would it serve the public interest. That’s why nothing would ever justify Trump making the demand for a special counsel, which he is reportedly close to doing.
Any special counsel appointed due to Trump’s prodding will not be seen as independent but as tainted. A Trump-appointed special counsel investigation would be painted by the Democrats and a compliant media as a political witch hunt. Trump’s animus against the Bidens is well known. Trump was impeached for improperly demanding a different investigation, a foreign one, into some of the Bidens’ business affairs.
Indeed, under most circumstances, special counsels are a bad idea. They tend to be self-perpetuating, and they lack small-R republican accountability. On the rare occasions when a special counsel is justified, the justification is that of removing conflicts of interest, including political ones, from the investigative process. Presidents should almost never involve themselves in prosecutorial processes on the front end, and certainly not in ones with a political tinge. If an embittered and vengeful Trump orders a special counsel, the political motive would be obvious, not to mention poisonous.
On the other hand, few investigative circumstances are more obviously fraught with political implications than an investigation into the immediate family of a president. The imperative of shielding investigators and prosecutors is real.
That’s why it would be not just appropriate but advisable for congressional leaders to transcend partisan politics and put the good of the nation first. (They may not seem accustomed to such decency, but sometimes even flawed people experience bouts of conscience.) If the dilemma is that even the establishment of what is intended to be a safeguard against unwarranted politics itself looks political, then the safeguard isn’t a solution at all. But if a call for a special counsel, or for some other sort of safeguard of investigative integrity, came jointly from the Republican and Democratic leaders in Congress, then the partisan taint would be removed from the establishment of the safeguard itself.
Trump shouldn’t come within miles, indeed not within light-years, of any investigation of the Biden family. But the public does deserve assurances of its integrity, and McConnell and Pelosi together should demand it.
