{"id":173051,"date":"2023-06-25T16:59:21","date_gmt":"2023-06-25T20:59:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=173051"},"modified":"2023-06-25T17:07:28","modified_gmt":"2023-06-25T21:07:28","slug":"ag-merrick-garland-is-in-huge-trouble","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/?p=173051","title":{"rendered":"

AG Merrick Garland is in HUGE trouble<\/span><\/b><\/h1>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who is lying? Merrick Garland or the whistleblowers?<\/h1>\n

By Jonathan Turley
\nThe Hill<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not the deciding official.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Those five words, allegedly from Delaware U.S. Attorney\u00a0David Weiss,<\/a>\u00a0shocked IRS and FBI investigators in a meeting on October 22, 2022. This is because,\u00a0in refusing to appoint a special counsel, Attorney Garland Merrick Garland had repeatedly assured the public and Congress that Weiss had total authority over his investigation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n

IRS supervisory agent Gary A. Shapley Jr.\u00a0told Congress<\/a>\u00a0he was so dismayed by Weiss\u2019s statement and other admissions that he memorialized them in a communication to other team members.<\/p>\n

Shapley and another whistleblower detail what they describe as a pattern of interference with their investigation of Hunter Biden, including the denial of searches, lines of questioning, and even attempted indictments.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The only thing abundantly clear is that someone is lying. Either these whistleblowers are lying to Congress, or these Justice Department officials (including Garland) are lying.<\/p>\n

The response from both Hunter Biden\u2019s counsel and the attorney general himself only deepened the concerns.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Christopher Clark, an attorney for Hunter Biden,\u00a0responded<\/a>\u00a0to a shocking Whatsapp message that the president\u2019s son had allegedly sent to a Chinese official with foreign intelligence contacts who was funneling millions to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am sitting here with my father,\u201d the younger Biden wrote, \u201cand we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled. Tell the director that I would like to resolve this now before it gets out of hand, and now means tonight.\u00a0And, Z, if I get a call or text from anyone involved in this other than you, Zhang, or the chairman, I will make certain that between the man sitting next to me and every person he knows and my ability to forever hold a grudge that you will regret not following my direction<\/strong>. I am sitting here waiting for the call with my father.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

President Biden has repeatedly told the public that he had no knowledge or involvement in his son\u2019s dealings. He maintained the denial despite audiotapes of him referring to business dealings, photos and meetings with his son\u2019s business associates, as well as an eyewitness account of an in-person meeting.<\/p>\n

Clark did not deny that the above-quoted message had been sent. He only said that it was \u201cillegal\u201d to release the text (he did not explain why) and then added that \u201c[a]ny verifiable words or actions of my client in the midst of a horrible addiction are solely his own and have no connection to anyone in his family.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/p>\n

Most of us expected a simple denial. Yet, after five years, Hunter has never even denied that the laptop was his. His team has continued with the same\u00a0non-denial denials<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The transcript also details how investigators wanted to confirm the authenticity of the Whatsapp message through the company. The Justice Department reportedly shut down that effort.<\/p>\n

If\u00a0Hunter Biden\u00a0<\/a>was evasive, Garland was irate. He denounced the allegations as \u201can attack on an institution that is essential to American democracy, and essential to the safety of the American people.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/picture><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The statement bordered on delusion.<\/strong>\u00a0Polls show that a majority of the public now views the Justice Department as politically compromised and even engaged in election interference. The level of trust in the department under Garland is now lower than it was under his predecessor, Bill Barr<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These questions are not an attack on the institution, but on what some are doing with it. Garland\u2019s reaction is akin to doctors responding to malpractice lawsuits as attacks on medicine itself.<\/p>\n

As in the past, Garland continued to insist that the public must trust him and his department,\u00a0because\u00a0\u201cYou\u2019ve all heard me say many times that we make our cases based on the facts and the law.\u201d\u00a0<\/strong>\u00a0Once again, he reminded citizens that \u201cthese are not just words. These are what we live by.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those us who once supported Garland\u2019s nomination as Attorney General, it was another maddening moment. Garland has done little to change the view of his department or to address\u00a0 the political bias that has plagued it and the FBI for years. That record has resulted in blistering reports from the Inspector General and most recently Special Counsel John Durham.<\/p>\n

Garland does have a\u00a0motto. Yet, as these allegations pile up it is becoming more and more of a meaningless mantra.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The attorney general has a growing problem. For years, many of us have criticized him for his inexplicable refusal to appoint a Special Counsel on the Biden influence peddling scandal. Indeed, I have written over a dozen columns on why such an appointment seemed unavoidable, given the references to the president under various code names as a possible recipient of money and other benefits from foreign deals.<\/p>\n

Even after a respected FBI source detailed allegations of a bribery scheme involving Ukrainian figures, Garland still refused to make the appointment. Such an appointment would not only expose Joe Biden to high-risk interviews, but would also allow the Special Counsel to issue a report on influence peddling by his family.<\/p>\n

Garland was willing to appoint a Special Counsel to look into classified records found in Biden\u2019s various offices, yet he continues to bar an appointment on major corruption allegations implicating the president.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It was impossible to investigate these matters without tripping over the president and other family members. The whistleblowers detailed repeated occasions in which they were told to back off.<\/p>\n

Even the narrow tax issues addressed in Hunter\u2019s recent plea bargain relate to those broader issues, given the source of these funds. Influence peddling may be lawful, but it is also corrupt. Indeed, it is the favorite form of corruption in Washington and a virtual family legacy of the Bidens.<\/p>\n

It is the concealment of the corruption that often results in crimes, from false statements to tax evasion to unlawful financial transactions to unlawful work as an unregistered foreign agent.<\/p>\n

The whistleblowers allege that the Justice Department consistently cut them off in seeking searches or answers related to President Biden. However, the line that stood out the most was this:\u00a0\u201cU.S. Attorney Weiss stated that he subsequently asked for special counsel authority from Main DOJ at that time and was denied that authority.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

If true, that means that Garland was not just hearing from experts and members of Congress calling for an appointment, but that Weiss himself also saw the need for such an appointment. Moreover, the report indicates that others in the investigation believed that there was a need to create such separation from the Justice Department in light of what they viewed as the special treatment given the president\u2019s son.<\/p>\n

These accounts could explain why the Justice Department took five years to secure a guilty plea to two misdemeanors that could have been established in the first month of the investigation.<\/p>\n

It would explain why there is no evidence of serious investigation into the influence peddling or a charge under FARA.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It would explain why\u00a0Hunter\u2019s lawyer cannot recall ever being asked about the laptop.<\/a><\/p>\n

It would explain why the problem is not the Justice Department\u2019s motto,\u00a0but the man who is tasked with\u00a0fulfilling\u00a0it.<\/strong><\/p>\n

___
\nhttps:\/\/www.zerohedge.com\/political\/turley-who-lying-merrick-garland-or-whistleblowers<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who is lying? Merrick Garland or the whistleblowers?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-173051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=173051"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/173051\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=173051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=173051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/stateofthenation.co\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=173051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}