Attorne Attorney General Merrick Garland announcing he will give david weiss Special Counsel status to investigate the president s son. Hello and welcome everyone, im sandra smith. Gillian, great to have you back. Gillian this is America Reports. Garland says weiss told him he wanted to be given Special Counsel status to continue his probe into hunter biden. This after insisting for months that step was not necessary. Sandra the timing of this announcement is certainly being highlighted at this hour, and raising Big Questions about how the probe will intersect with a separate congressional investigation. And a Draft Plea Deal between hunters attorneys and weiss thats currently being reworked. Gillian Lindsey Graham as well as house ways and Means Committee chair jason smith are both here to react. Sandra mark meredith, live at the Justice Department at this hour for us. Why did the attorney yes decide to do this and decide to do this now, mark . Sandra, good afternoon to you. The u. S.
the timing, they are complaining about who it is, republicans were never going to be happy and admit the process was fair. to my democratic colleagues. if you think you are going to get away with this, you are crazy. mr. weiss is compromised, his team is compromised. the plea deal, no american would get advantage of that deal. the whistleblower tells us the weiss team has been suppressed during the investigation, let the statute of limitations run out. so no, i don t trust the weiss team to get to the bottom of what hunter biden and joe biden may have done. again, you tried to put out a political fire, you pour gasoline on it. who in their right mind believes changing the title of what you call mr. weiss solves all the problems associated with mr. weiss. nobody. sandra: really, really interesting. we continue to get a lot of reaction here. your colleague, jim jordan says
weekend instead and i would imagine the white house would simply defer all questions to hunter biden s legal team which they have done in the past. as i mentioned, we had a chance to ask the white house a few weeks ago what happens if the first son is convicted on any charge, would president biden then consider a pardon and the white house issued a flat no, that was not a possibility in their eyes. whether or not we are going to see additional comment from the white house is still yet to be seen. gillian: i know you are at the justice department today, we are used to seeing you more regularly at the white house. can i ask you to put that cap back on for a moment. do you think it s going to be sustainable messaging strategy for the white house communications team to continue deferring questions regarding this now special counsel investigation all to the department of justice or do you think at some point here the president, by virtue of the fact he is hunter biden s father, is going t
biden s legal team decide to do next, whether or not they will try to fight this and prolong this case, it will drag on for the next several months if not the next year, and the upcoming presidential election. the white house has made it clear they are going to stay away from this as possible say they were not interfering with the probe involving first son hunter biden. we even got the white house to announce for the first time two weeks ago there will be no pardon of the first son if he were to be convicted on the charges, especially now that it s heading to trial. the real focus is also on the u.s. attorney david weiss, who republicans were certainly interesting to see where he was going going into that plea agreement, but obviously they scoffed after the agreement was shut down by a federal judge saying they felt weiss was giving a sweetheart deal to the first son. however, we are hearing from some congressional republicans who say they are not happy weiss is the special counsel, th
break in american history. does anybody trust the weiss team to continue to fairly and impartially investigate the hunter biden-joe biden matter, i don t. you change the title but the problem is still the same. sandra: really interesting. you say it s a political move, not legal one. totally. sandra: what are the political implications for the president and the re-election bid, do you believe? dumber than dirt political move. a friday afternoon and anything bad on a friday afternoon, make a four minute announcement turn weiss into a special counsel to remove any and all doubt. andy is right. there is no ongoing investigation of hunter biden or joe biden. why would you accept a plea to have the case if you were to investigate the guy for other crimes. nobody ever does this. the only reason we are talking about this, the plea deal blew