President Biden on Friday offered few words in response to a question about the appointment of a special counsel to continue the investigation into his son, Hunter Biden.
“I have no comment on any investigation that’s going on. That’s up to the Justice Department, and that’s all I have to say,” Biden said during a joint press conference with the leaders of South Korea and Japan, in what amounted to his first public comments on the matter.
Last week, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced he would appoint U.S. attorney David Weiss as a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden. Garland’s announcement allows Weiss to continue his investigation into the president’s son free from the conventional DOJ oversight.
The appointment came on the same day that the younger Biden’s plea deal fell through. Under the deal, Hunter would have pleaded guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and submit to a diversion agreement related to a felony gun charge in exchange for broad immunity from future charges related to foreign influence-peddling. But Judge Maryellen Noreika challenged the terms of the deal, calling such a broad immunity deal unprecedented.
Just before Garland announced the special-counsel appointment, prosecutors said in a court filing that the revised deal had fallen through and that they expect the case to go to trial.
On Friday, Noreika dismissed the two outstanding misdemeanor tax charges against Hunter Biden following a request from federal prosecutors, making way for Weiss to bring additional charges in the case.
Garland said the special-counsel appointment “reinforces for the American people the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters.”
Weiss insisted last month that he had “ultimate authority” over the Hunter Biden probe, despite IRS whistleblower allegations that the IRS, DOJ, and FBI had interfered with the investigation.
The two IRS whistleblowers told the House Ways and Means Committee that they pushed for felony charges against Hunter Biden in the tax probe and that Weiss wanted to bring charges against the younger Biden in the District of Columbia and Southern California last year but was denied by DOJ officials both times.
Weiss also asked to be appointed special counsel in the case on several occasions, including in spring 2022, but those requests were also rebuffed by the DOJ, according to the whistleblowers’ testimony.