Garland’s distance from Hunter Biden investigation fails to quell critics

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland was 3,000 miles from Delaware on Tuesday when federal prosecutors announced a deal for Hunter Biden on tax and gun charges that would most likely keep him from serving time.

It reflected the distance Mr. Garland has sought in the investigation of his boss’s son.

Mr Garland’s aides say his trip to Europe had been weeks in the making, and his absence from the country was a coincidence, not calculation. But his two-day visit to Stockholm and The Hague was nevertheless fitting for an attorney general who has gone to great lengths to emphasize that he is no longer involved in the day-to-day oversight of high-stakes investigations from former President Donald J. Trump, President Biden and Mr. Biden’s troubled youngest son.

The Hunter Biden investigation predates Mr. Garland. It was initiated by the Justice Department under Mr. Trump in 2018 and placed under U.S. Attorney in Delaware David C. Weiss, one of the few Trump-appointed prosecutors retained in the Biden administration.

Mr. Garland fired Mr. Weiss, a Republican, not to ensure the appearance of impartiality – a strategy aimed at protecting the department, and to some extent himself, from accusations of political favoritism.

But although Mr. Garland pledged to restore confidence in the independence of the Justice Department when he took office, he has faced a relentless succession of politically sensitive investigations, and his attempt to project impartiality is often drowned out in the intensely polarized environment in which he operates.

“For Garland, there’s a kind of jujitsu in all of this — it could be a commitment to principle, a cynical outlook, or a combination of the two — but it’s focused on surviving in a tough environment,” said Jed Handelsman Shugerman, a professor at Fordham Law School. . who has studied the history of the department and its leadership. “The Merrick Garland constituencies are political – they are ghosts of justice of the past, justice of the future and the rule of law.”

But if Mr. Garland had any illusions that that approach would shield him from criticism (and aides say he doesn’t), those have been emphatically dispelled.

Even after Mr. Weiss conducted a five-year investigation that produced evidence to impeach Mr. Biden on only limited charges, Republicans, including those who have a dim view of Mr. Trump’s handling of classified material after he left office, the White accused House and Mr. Garland of arming the Justice Department.

Under the agreement, Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two felony tax charges and avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge. If a federal judge approves the deal, Mr. Biden will be placed in a two-year diversion program for nonviolent offenders convicted of gun crimes and will not face jail time.

The announcement of the deal came shortly after Trump was charged with endangering national security secrets and obstructing government efforts to recover classified documents.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy denounced the deal as evidence of a “dual tier” justice system under Mr. Garland that has resulted in the aggressive prosecution of Mr. Trump and leniency to the president’s allies and family — though the two cases differ significantly.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment. But Mr. Garland is likely to come under pressure over the agreement on Wednesday, when he holds a press conference before returning to the United States.

In the past, Mr. Garland questions aside and referred the matter to Mr. Weiss.

“I promised not to interfere with that investigation, and I kept my promise,” said Mr. Garland during an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee in March, in response to pointed questions from Republicans about the Hunter Biden investigation.

People close to the situation said Mr. Garland was not in the Hunter Biden deal, but said he was aware of the agreement.

Not surprisingly, many of Trump’s closest allies greeted that with distrust.

Tom Fitton, who founded Judicial Watch, a conservative advocacy group in Washington, called the plea deal and diversion deal “a miscarriage of justice of which President Biden is the primary beneficiary.” He wondered why Mr Garland had not appointed a special counsel who might have prepared a public report explaining why prosecutors had not sought a more severe sentence, as did John Durham, the special counsel investigating the origins of the investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

“Garland, not Weiss, is ultimately responsible, and there is no deal that goes through without Garland’s agreement or complicity,” said Mr. Fitton in an interview. “He conveniently ignored the rules, which required the appointment of a special counsel.”

Mr. Garland never seriously considered appointing special counsel, in part because it was not deemed necessary in previous investigations of presidential relatives, according to a former law enforcement official familiar with the matter.

Democrats, for their part, rallied behind him.

“This development reflects the Justice Department’s continued institutional independence in pursuing evidence of actual crimes and upholding the rule of law” in the face of Republican “troublesome” Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the top Democrat on the oversight committee from the house, said in a statement.