Who is David Weiss, US special counsel in the Hunter Biden case?
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[August 12, 2023]
By Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Prosecutor David Weiss has spent years probing
allegations involving President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden. Now as a
U.S. special counsel, he will have a chance to dig deeper while facing
intense scrutiny from the president's opponents.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss, the Delaware U.S.
attorney, to the special counsel job on Friday, two weeks after a
federal judge held off accepting Weiss's deal to let Hunter Biden plead
guilty to failing to pay taxes and unlawfully owning a firearm while
addicted to illegal drugs.
Garland said Weiss asked for the appointment.
After being appointed on Friday, Weiss said in a court filing that plea
negotiations had stalled and the case would likely go to trial.
Weiss supervised the Biden investigation from its start in 2019,
focusing initially on potential violations of tax and money laundering
laws in Hunter Biden's foreign business dealings, particularly in China,
Reuters has reported.
Weiss's legal career has been built on a string of high-stakes
assignments involving political and business figures in the Bidens' home
state of Delaware. Weiss’s firm represented the family of Anne Marie
Fahey, a secretary of Delaware's then-governor who went missing in 1996.
Weiss pressed federal authorities to get involved in the investigation,
said Thomas Ostrander, who worked with Weiss at law firm Duane Morris, a
move that helped lead to the murder conviction of Delaware’s former
deputy attorney general.
Weiss also oversaw the prosecution of Christopher Tigani, a Delaware
beer distributor who solicited donations for Joe Biden’s unsuccessful
2008 presidential campaign and was later convicted of campaign finance
violations, Politico reported.
Weiss’s office suffered a setback in a high-profile corporate case in
2021 when a federal appeals court overturned the convictions of four
former Wilmington Trust executives accused of hiding troubled loans in
the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Prosecutors later agreed to
drop all charges.
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A TRUMP APPOINTEE, WEISS A REPUBLICAN TARGET NONE THE LESS
Republican then-President Donald Trump in 2018 named Weiss to his post
as the top federal prosecutor in Delaware. Weiss agreed to stay in the
job after Biden took office in January 2021 to complete his long-running
probe into Hunter Biden’s finances.
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![](../images/081223PIX/news_s24.jpg)
Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe
Biden, departs federal court after a plea hearing on two misdemeanor
charges of willfully failing to pay income taxes in Wilmington,
Delaware, U.S. July 26, 2023. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2017/Jul/22/images/ads/current/rohlfs_lda_072017.png)
Hunter Biden's legal woes have been amplified by Republican
lawmakers who have pressed unproven claims that his father, a
Democrat, has benefited from his son's business ventures.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was among Republican leaders to
criticize Weiss after his special counsel appointment, asking how
Weiss's fairness could be trusted after he negotiated what McCarthy
called a "sweetheart" plea deal that a judge would not approve.
Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise called him a "sham
special counsel."
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Garland has previously vowed not to interfere in the criminal
investigation and answered Republican criticism by emphasizing
Weiss’s role leading the probe. Former colleagues described Weiss as
an independent-minded prosecutor.
“I don’t think he’s thinking about the politics at all,” Ostrander
told Reuters in June. “He’s simply thinking about doing his job and
doing what’s appropriate under the circumstances.”
Weiss's nomination as Delaware's U.S. attorney was backed by
Delaware’s two Democratic U.S. senators. He previously served as the
top deputy in the office and was interim U.S. attorney during the
early years of the 2009-2017 Obama administration.
Lawmakers credited Weiss with prosecuting corruption, money
laundering, drug offenses and helping to secure federal funding to
fight illegal drug trafficking in Delaware.
(Reporting by Andrew Goudsward; Editing by David Bario and Howard
Goller)
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