Modified Limited Hangout

Yesterday I linked to an August 19 story at Politico that referred to "more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors" that had somehow come to Politico's attention. Yesterday Red State reported,

The New York Times was also shown the emails that Politico based its story on, and together, the two outlets offer a stunning look at various events that appear to show clear collusion between Hunter Biden and the DOJ.

Red State concludes from the two document dumps:

Hunter Biden's legal strategy was to pressure and coerce the DOJ into not prosecuting. That was accomplished through the aforementioned threat of calling Joe Biden to testify, but also through a series of moves to politicize the probe, including inserting Donald Trump into the discussion. You may recognize the name Lesley Wolf, as that's the same Assitant [sic -- this is Conserative Inc's standard of proofreading] U.S. Attorney who essentially scuttled the IRS' investigation into Hunter Biden. I can only assume she took the threat of "career suicide" from Hunter Biden's lawyers very seriously given her actions regarding the case.

Wait a moment. Someone sent more than 300 pages of e-mails and documents to Politico and The New York Times? Politico is a heavyweight, insider-focused outlet, while the New York Times served, among other things, as James Comey's mouthpiece to give his version of events after Trump fired him as FBI director. In other words, these new 300 pages came straight from the Deep State, in this case, David Weiss and his prosecution team, via uber-establishment media. In effect, they're a tacitly quasi-official version from Weiss of the events that led up to Weiss's appointment as special counsel. Why is this coming out now, from those sources?

Oddly, nobody from Conservative Inc has even asked that question. They're too busy lapping up the juicy details to try to figure out what this means. I would call this account a modified limited hangout. In fact, there's an eponymous blog on the subject:

Coined on the fly by Nixon lawyer John Ehrlichman in 1973, it's a very unique phrase. A modified limited hangout is the public admission of a wrong in an attempt to hide a more serious wrong, while the media and prosecutors are investigating related crimes. It's a defensive tool in trying to cover-up a conspiracy.

There's no question that there were frenzied negotiations throughout 2022 and well into 2023 over precisely what charges should be brought against Hunter Biden and how his penalties could be credibly minimized, but the story as released and spun by the Times and Politico is intended to make Weiss, his prosecution team, and Garland look, if not good, at least excusable. The quasi-official version boils down to eventually, Weiss, his team, and Garland got fed up with the political pressure, and once Judge Norieka showed skepticism about the deal, it gave them an opening effectively to withdraw it by claiming they had a different understanding of the unspoken immunity terms than Hunter's team did.

It's still hard for the Justice Department to edge away from an interpretation that over 18 months, they'd succumbed to intense political pressure from the Bidens while Garland took the public position that the team was "independent" -- until the collapse of the whole frammis in court on July 26 forced Garland to backtrack and name Weiss special counsel by August 11.

One thread that runs through this version of events is the emergence of the IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler and their testimony before the Comer committee. Faced with their testimony that the Justice Department forced the IRS to take them off the Hunter investigation, Garland and Weiss have been forced to do damage control as subsequent events have unfolded. That Politico and the Times would enable this suggests some sort of tectonic shift may be taking place within the Deep State and its allies.

I think this basic development stems from a growing concern, especially at the Justice Department, that Biden could lose the 2024 election to Trump, and Trump would immediately clean house at Justice, which would make people like David Weiss and Merrick Garland vulnerable to obstruction of justice charges. Garland and Weiss are now out to do what they can to scrub at least the public perception of the record. After all, if Biden were a sure thing for 2024, there would be absolutely no reason for them to worry, they'd be golden for four more years, and they'd do business as they'd been doing it until the IRS whistleblowers showed up and Judge Norieka killed the deal.

The process may be slow and cumbersome, but just for starters, we're beginning to see daylight between the Justice Department and the Bidens that we hadmn't previously seen. My guess is that further rise in the polls for Trump will hasten this overall process.