WSJ Columnist: What the Hell Is Merrick Garland Doing?

 Attorney General Merrick Garland is facing a potential impeachment inquiry for what appears to be lying to Congress about the independence of the Justice Department’s investigations into Hunter Biden. Garland not only said there was no interference from the Department of Justice but that prosecuting attorneys had the authority to bring whatever legal action was required pending the results of the findings. That is not the case. IRS whistleblowers have come forward with credible testimony, citing pervasive DOJ meddling.

IRS Agent Gary Shapley has gone on record to CBS News contradicting Garland’s testimony. The IRS task force investigating Hunter was also scrapped. US Attorney David Weiss, who had been investigating the son of the former president, wanted to charge Hunter in 2022 but was blocked on multiple occasions. This development was also confirmed by The New York Times, though they did their best to bury the story.

    WATCH: Sen. Cruz’s full line of questioning and AG Merrick Garland’s under oath testimony that is now contradicted by an IRS whistleblower. pic.twitter.com/qUAn52ggQj
    — Steve Guest (@SteveGuest) May 25, 2023

Wall Street Journal Kimberley Strassel highlighted the coming media spin aimed at protecting Garland from impeachment while adding that two key questions are on his desk right now concerning how the Department of Justice conducted themselves with the Hunter Biden investigations (via WSJ) [emphasis mine]:

    The attorney general was insistent in a Friday press conference that Justice Department brass hadn’t interfered in the probe into Joe Biden’s son, and that Mr. Weiss was “given complete authority to make all decisions,” including “to prosecute any way in which he wanted to and in any district in which he wanted to.” He said Mr. Weiss had never asked him for special-counsel authority, even as he claimed the Delaware prosecutor has “in fact more authority” than that of a special counsel.

    Mr. Garland’s statements are completely at odds with testimony from IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley. That investigator says prosecutors working for Mr. Weiss wanted to charge Hunter with felony tax offenses in the District of Columbia and California. But he says Mr. Weiss surprised him and others in an October 2022 meeting by saying he was “not the deciding official on whether charges are filed,” and explained that the Biden-appointed U.S. attorney for the capital, Matthew Graves, wouldn’t allow charges to proceed.

    […]

    The Times seemed more interested in fogging the air, suggesting the whole thing may come down to “miscommunication” or “clashing substantive judgments among agencies over how best to pursue a prosecution.” Expect more such obfuscation from Mr. Garland’s defenders and the Justice Department itself. But don’t be taken in. There are only two relevant questions here, both of which will have documented answers. First, is it true that the president’s appointed attorneys refused to bring charges against the president’s son in their districts, defying a team that had spent years building a case? Second, was Mr. Weiss ever given formal authority to bring those charges on his own?

    The answer to the first question already looks to be yes, and it alone constitutes a scandal. If the team appointed to investigate Hunter wanted cases prosecuted in certain jurisdictions, and those cases failed to proceed on the say-so of Biden appointees, it destroys Mr. Garland’s claims that the case was insulated from politics. And no one will have to rely solely on Mr. Shapley’s word or emails, already partly backed by the Times reporting. His attorneys provided the names of others present at that October meeting, and they’ll testify. Assuming the U.S. attorneys did block the effort, there will be an extensive document trail: travel vouchers by those who presented the cases in Washington and California, documents from those presentations, emails about the decision. The department might try to block production of those documents from Congress, but federal inspectors general are now also on the case.

    Then to the second question about Mr. Weiss’s own authority. U.S. attorneys can’t file charges wherever they please; they have jurisdictions. Mr. Garland’s claim that Mr. Weiss had even “more authority” than a special counsel with the ability to file “in any district” is bizarre—unless Mr. Weiss was formally given such power. As Sol Wisenberg, a former associate and deputy independent counsel, explained on Twitter, to file elsewhere Mr. Weiss would “need some kind of letter from Garland (or an [associate attorney general]) naming Weiss as a special or poo-bah counsel authorized to file charges in the relevant district.” He emphasizes that “Garland cannot give that authority verbally,” there needs to be a “written delegation.”

    So where is it?

The investigation into Hunter Biden is no longer a partisan ploy: the Department of Justice’s reported actions just magnified the case. What were they trying to hide and why? And what about this letter regarding special counsel status that Weiss requested? Did Garland sign off on it? Congressional Republicans now have all the reason they need to dig deep investigating into not just Hunter but the actions of the DOJ. The sub-committee on how the federal government has been weaponized should possibly be roped into these inquiries. The House Oversight Committee should be aggressive as well. Shapley added that he suspects the Justice Department interfered so much because some of the roads his task force were on could have led to Joe Biden.