Special counsel’s appointment just a bid to whitewash Bidens’ business deals, Republicans say

The appointment of a special counsel may appear to put a bullseye on Hunter Biden and threaten to make the family’s foreign business deals a lasting issue for the president’s reelection campaign.

However, some Republicans fear the federal probe is a device to whitewash President Biden’s purported involvement in pay-to-play schemes.

They point out, among other things, that Attorney General Merrick Garland has picked as special counsel the same prosecutor who was responsible for Hunter Biden’s botched sweetheart deal on misdemeanor tax and gun crimes.

While the counsel gives a forum for probes of the Biden family’s lucrative foreign business deals and theoretically raises the specter of potentially more charges against the first son, Republicans said Sunday that naming Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss as special counsel was all for show.

“This appointment is camouflage, and it’s a cover-up. I think it’s disgraceful,” Sen. Ted Cruz, Texas Republican. said on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.”

Mr. Cruz said Mr. Weiss “was either an active participant in covering this criminality and protecting Joe Biden and engaging in obstruction of justice … or he was so weak that he couldn’t stop the partisans at main Justice from turning it in a political effort.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn, Tennessee Republican, accused Mr. Weiss of being a “collaborator” and that a House impeachment inquiry may be needed to find a smoking gun that Mr. Biden personally benefited from millions of dollars that went to Hunter Biden or that he was bribed.

“The American people can see through this. They know what is going on,” she said on the same Fox News show as Mr. Cruz but in a separate interview.

Mr. Garland “owes the American people better than to do something like this,” she said.

Democrats, meanwhile, suggested Republicans are being hypocritical because they had been calling for a special counsel and their complaints now mean they are unlikely ever to be satisfied.

“It’s what my Republican colleagues have been demanding and asking for months. And now, they seem to disapprove of it for some reason,” Rep. Jamie Raskin, Maryland Democrat, said on ABC’s “This Week.”

“From my perspective, it is the rule of law and the justice system working itself out the way that it does. It’s bumpy, and this side or that side doesn’t necessarily prefer this course of events. But our job, I think as political people, is to allow the justice system to run its course,” he said.

Mr. Weiss is set to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in the coming weeks about the now-scuttled plea deal with Hunter Biden, which would have spared the president’s son felony charges or any jail time for failing to pay his taxes and lying on a gun background check form.

It also would have offered him immunity against any future charges related to his past business deals as a board member of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma.

An attorney for Hunter Biden blamed conservative media sources on Sunday for what he called “false allegations” of corruption against his client.

Abbe Lowell said prosecutors already had the opportunity to investigate the president’s son under the Foreign Agents Registration Act for failing to register as a foreign agent while working with overseas business partners.

“After five years and what we know happened in the grand jury, of course, that had to be part of what the prosecutor has already looked at, as well as every other false allegation made by the right-wing media and others, whether it’s corruption or FARA or money laundering,” Mr. Lowell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “That was part of what this prosecutor’s office had to have been looking over for five years.”

The case received fresh attention over the weekend from GOP presidential hopefuls, including former Vice President Mike Pence on Sunday.

“I am hopeful that special counsel Weiss will do his job without fear or favor, but I have confidence that [Rep.] Jim Jordan, Congressman [James] Comer and others will continue to do their job for the American people,” Mr. Pence said on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” referring to the two Republican House members leading the  chamber’s investigative panels.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner expressed concern Sunday about the special counsel’s office of slow-walking the investigations to run out the statute of limitations on potential charges of foreign influence peddling.