It would be hard to find any serious person who would deny with a straight face that there are substantial unanswered questions surrounding the Department of Justice’s conduct of the Hunter Biden investigation. Even those who would in any event give him a pass, and if need be, his father too, would be hard pressed to deny that there are at least presumptive problems with the anomalous course of the DOJ investigation. It fairly reeks of irregularity and favoritism.
We would have thought that the exercise of the constitutionally mandated congressional oversight function would be a natural and that an apolitical, by the book, attorney general would welcome the opportunity to provide answers and explain what happened on his watch. Unfortunately, Mr. Garland was nothing if not utterly disdainful of the congressional responsibility, refusing to provide any insight into the puzzling conduct of the DOJ.
So, for example the Attorney General refused to tell the overnight committee anything about how the so-called “sweetheart” deal allowing Hunter Biden to pled guilty to two minor tax violations despite alleged millions of dollars of unreported income and why was the statute of limitations permitted to run on the latter? Nor would he explain why Hunter Biden was gratuitously offered blanket immunity for all other crimes he may have committed nor why he was not charged with not having registered as a representative off foreign interests despite his lobbying effort on behalf of foreign companies when he lobbied for foreign companies?
And it’s not as if we and other concerned citizens were the only persons dismayed by the departures. The judge who was supposed to approve the deal refused to do so, noting that she had never before seen one containing these kind of leniencies – and in answer to her question, the government’s lawyers said he hadn’t either.
Of course, it is no secret that the backdrop to all of this is the possibility that President Biden’s Justice Department was showing favoritism to his son or that he was complicit in his activities and there was an effort to cut off any investigative leads to the President. Did Mr. Garland pursue possible bribe payments to Mr. Biden or his designees of the sort Hunter Biden strongly suggested on his laptop? Did he try to find out from Hunter Biden’s clients what they got in return for their payment to him?
So, when Attorney General Garland consistently claimed he could not answer the questions put to him by the oversight committee because there were ongoing investigations and DOJ policy that would not permit him to disclose non-public DOJ information or undercut the special DOJ counsel in charge of the investigation of Hunter Biden, he only whetted the appetites of many Americans. There are gaping holes in what information there is out there as to why the DOJ acted the suspect way it did.
Yet the Democrats have simultaneously mounted a ferocious opposition to the Republican Biden impeachment inquiry which would provide constitutional authority by bypassing the DOJ rules and permit access to the truth.
President Joe Biden, Attorney General Garland and the DOJ can’t have it both ways.
