Media Say Little About Flip-Flop on Hunter Biden Special Counsel

Drew Holden of the Washington Free Beacon ponders major media outlets’ apparent disinterest in a key piece of the Hunter Biden story.

The mainstream media largely accepted the Justice Department’s claim that there was no need for a special counsel in the investigation of Hunter Biden’s influence peddling. Then, after a failed attempt to give Biden a sweetheart plea deal, the Justice Department appointed a special counsel last week.

The media have hardly questioned the reversal.

Then: Attorney General Merrick Garland in June scoffed at the idea that the lead prosecutor in the Biden probe needed special counsel powers, saying, “Weiss had, in fact, more authority than a special counsel would have had.” The prosecutor, David Weiss, quickly agreed with Garland and denied whistleblowers’ testimony that he had asked to be made a special counsel in the face of internal resistance to his probe of the president’s son. That seemed to be good enough for the press. …

… Now: Garland announced on Friday that he had elevated Weiss to special counsel after the prosecutor told him the powers were necessary to continue the Biden investigation. The media have sounded curiously incurious about the two men’s apparent reversals of their earlier positions.

New York Times: “Why Naming Weiss Special Counsel in the Hunter Biden Case May Not Change Much”:

“One oddity about Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s decision to give special counsel status to David Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for Delaware who has been leading the investigation into President Biden’s son Hunter, is that both Mr. Garland and Mr. Weiss have already said the prosecutor was empowered to act independently.

“That means making Mr. Weiss a special counsel may be more of a cosmetic gesture—essentially formalizing what has already been the case—than a new reality.” …

… But so far, even the most dramatic contradictions in the case—like Weiss trying and failing to give Biden a sweetheart plea deal while the investigation was supposedly ongoing—have not been enough for the media to demand answers.