Joe's Nixon Problem

In yesterday's post, I linked to a Breitbart story on how Biden won't discuss the Hunter problem with his staff. This morning I saw a CNN story that says the same thing, but with a different spin:

Long among the most sensitive subjects inside the West Wing, Hunter Biden’s legal saga now appears destined to play out amid his father’s bid for reelection, frustrating the president but so far causing little real concern among his advisers.

The probe into Hunter Biden is now one of two special counsel investigations – the other being an inquiry into his father’s handling of classified documents after leaving the Senate and the vice president’s office – that both appear poised to extend for months to come.

. . . [B]oth investigations take away the fundamental element of control for a White House heading into an election cycle. As multiple Biden advisers conceded privately this week, special counsels have a history of uncovering information they hadn’t set out initially to discover. The fact that it’s also a delicate family matter, people close to Biden say, is creating a level of personal angst unlike any other challenge for the president. . . . “Hunter Biden is not a topic of discussion in campaign meetings,” a senior aide said, speaking on condition of anonymity, given the sensitivity of the subject. “It’s just not addressed.”

As I compare the Joe-and-Hunter saga to Watergate, I see an area where Joe may have tailored a strategy to avoid one of Nixon's biggest mistakes -- he talked too much with his staff, especially John Dean. Dean was able to parlay his testimony on Nixon's incriminating remarks into lenient treatment for his own offenses, which should be a warning to anyone in any White House thinking of making conspiracies, but that Joe Biden should be avoiding Nixon's error is another indication that Biden isn't as senile as he wants people to believe.

Now this piece at Politico gives some insight into how Joe actually operates. There's been a great deal of recent speculation on how the "sweetheart deal" with David Weiss's prosecutors was worked out, and the story fleshes out some details. It summarizes "more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors" that shed "new light on the fraught negotiations that nearly produced a broad plea deal".

The problem, of course, is that the deal fell through, but the document trove indicates that Chistopher Clark, now off the case in something close to disgrace as he's likely to be a witness, was running the whole strategy. In a 2022 letter to Weiss's prosecutors, Clark

laid out what could have been seen as a promise, a warning, or just some very zealous lawyering: He said Joe Biden would undoubtedly be a witness at trial because of leaks about the probe. He wrote that just a few weeks before sending his letter, there had been two back-to-back leaks related to Hunter Biden and the gun issue. First, someone told The Washington Post that investigators thought Biden deserved tax and gun charges. Then a few days later, The Daily Mail reported on a voicemail Joe Biden left for his son in the window of time when he allegedly owned the gun.

. . . “There can be no doubt that these leaks have inserted President Biden into this case,” he said.

He then described a nearly unthinkable scenario: The president would testify to undermine a criminal case brought by prosecutors representing the United States of America.

Red State commented,

Politico offers the description of the move as a promise, warning, or very zealous lawyering, but that’s the mildest way to put it. Hunter Biden's legal team essentially gave the DOJ a choice: Stop pressing the gun charge or face the implied wrath of the president, with an assertion that the DOJ's reputation would be damaged in the process.

. . . Sure enough, instead of prosecuting the gun crime, Weiss and his team moved to offer pre-trial diversion. Now, we have ample evidence that the DOJ made that decision under the threat of involving and angering the President of the United States. Did that influence Weiss' decision? It's hard to see how it didn't given Hunter Biden's legal team apparently made it a centerpiece of their negotiations.

What we're seeing is a variation on what's starting to look like Joe's modus operandi, Hunter and his proxies make veiled references to the Big Guy while preserving his deniability, yet they make it clear that if their victims make Mr Big unhappy, things could go south in a hurry. In this particular case, it also looks like any discussions that took place between Hunter and Joe that were relayed to Clark would be covered by attorney-client privilege. (But then, maybe not. Clark had to withdraw because he could be a witness, which suggests exceptions to that privilege.)

The Politico story details months of negotiations on the plea deal between Clark and the prosecutors, with interruptions and changes in terms at many points along the way as the Comer committee released new information and IRS whistleblowers came forward. It's plain in the narrative that both Weiss and Garland were highly sensitive to such revelations, and they recognized throughout that the interests of the Justice Department and their personal legal exposure were not the same as Joe's or Hunter's.

This came to a head when Judge Noreika expressed her reservations about the deal. Weiss and Garland had become nervous. Back to the Politico link:

In the weeks that followed, Biden’s defense lawyers and federal prosecutors reopened their talks. They didn’t go well. According to court documents, Biden’s lawyers and prosecutors met shortly after the hearing, and Biden’s team suggested changes to the plea deal and the diversion agreement. The prosecutors didn’t accept their proposals, and instead suggested their own changes on July 31. But Biden’s lawyers rejected their suggestions on Aug. 7.

According to a letter Clark sent to the prosecutors on Aug. 7, those prosecutors had proposed, “without explanation, completely deleting the immunity provision” in the agreement. It was an abandonment of the language they had painstakingly negotiated, and it was a non-starter for Biden’s lawyers. It’s unclear why the prosecutors, after weeks of negotiations, now wanted to narrow the immunity they would offer. ["Unclear"? cough, cough. They were nervous.]

. . . The day after Clark sent his letter, Weiss asked Garland to make him a special counsel.

That would have been August 8; Garland officially made Weiss special Counsel on August 11. Presumably after talking with Weiss, Garland was nervous as well. On that day, Abbe Lowell took over from Clark as Hunter's de facto attorney, going on the weekend talks on Hunter's behalf on August 12 and 13. On Tuesday, August 15, Clark officially withdrew from the case.

Other accounts suggest Joe was closely involved with Hunter in the runup to the disastrous July 26 hearing in front of Judge Noreika. The New York Post reported this past Thursday,

The president’s embattled 53-year-old son began what ended up being a two-week stay at the Executive Mansion on June 21 — one day after he reached a doomed plea agreement with US Attorney David Weiss, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

. . . The report notes that most White House aides, including senior staffers, are not only “not involved” in conversations about the president’s son but “strenuously avoid” discussing Hunter Biden’s legal woes with the commander-in-chief because of the belief that their “contributions and ideas would not be welcome.”

They refuse to broach the topic with the president despite concern over the “toll” Hunter Biden’s legal predicaments are having on the oldest president in US history.

. . . However, aides cleared the president’s schedule on July 26, so he could closely monitor his son’s appearance in a Delaware courtroom, where it was expected that his plea deal with Weiss would be finalized, according to the Washington Post.

. . . The president’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, gave the commander-in-chief updates as the hours-long hearing unfolded and Hunter Biden’s deal fell apart, culminating in a not-guilty plea by the first son.

Attorney General Merrick Garland subsequently elevated Weiss to special counsel, which “blindsided” President Biden, according to the report.

What I'm gathering from all these data points is that Joe and Hunter are closely coordinating their strategies via a very small number of personal attorneys who are continuing to play the "Big Guy sorta wants it" game. They aren't making Nixon's mistake of bringing in White House staff, which then have an interest in testifying against them to save their own skins. On the other hand, it looks like Joe and Hunter spent many months bullying Weiss and his prosecutors into doing the "sweetheart" deal, which wound up making them so nervous they reneged on it in Judge Noreika's courtroom, and the fallout from that made Garland so nervous that he named Weiss a special prosecutor.

The problem is that the Joe-and-Hunter strategy of bullying Weiss into negotiating a "sweetheart" deal has fallen apart. There isn't, as some people still assert, some grander plan to execute a new, mega-sweetheart deal in another jurisdiction. For Weiss to drop the charges in Delaware and Garland to make him special prosecutor were last-minute attempts to cover themselves in a situation that had already made them very nervous. Why did Garland make Weiss special counsel, when what should have been done was to name a respected neutral outsider? Because Garland has his own problems now, and Weiss has the same ones -- they let Hunter, Joe, and Clark bully them into the sweetheart deal, which has fallen apart with no hope of bringing it back.

Joe and Hunter are off on a "vacation" at Lake Tahoe under the pretense of a family get-together. They're sorta-kinda working on a Plan B, in between Hunter stepping out of the room for a bump every 15 minutes. Let's hope the Secret Service swept the place for bugs before the family moved in. But Hunter's working it all out, he's the smartest guy Joe knows. Things'll be fine!