Prosecutor overseeing Hunter Biden probe is named special counsel

Attorney General Merrick Garland granted “special counsel” status to David Weiss, the federal prosecutor who has been investigating Hunter Biden for five years.

The move, announced Friday, gives Weiss broader leeway to investigate and bring charges, and it means Weiss will produce a report on his high-profile investigation into the president’s son.

As Garland made the announcement, Weiss filed court papers seeking to move federal tax charges against Hunter Biden out of Delaware. The court papers said negotiations over a plea deal had reached an “impasse” and that the case is now headed toward trial.

The move comes after several weeks of major developments in the five-year investigation of the president’s son. In June, Biden’s lawyers said they had made a deal to resolve the probe: Biden would plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and would enter a pretrial diversion agreement to resolve gun charges and likely avoid prison time. In exchange, the Justice Department would grant Biden some degree of immunity against more charges. At the time, Biden’s lawyers signaled that they expected the agreement to end the lengthy criminal investigation.

But on July 26, the deal went sideways. At a hearing at the federal courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware, Biden’s legal team and the federal prosecutors handling the case faced a series of probing questions from Judge Maryellen Noreika. She pressed them on just how broadly the deal would protect Biden from criminal charges. When a prosecutor said the deal wouldn’t prevent future charges related to lobbying, Biden’s lawyers threatened to back out. By the end of the tumultuous hearing, the deal appeared back on track and the judge ordered both parties to submit briefs about how much discretion she had in approving the deal.

In the intervening weeks — according to a new court filing from Weiss — the deal talks collapsed.

“Following additional negotiations after the hearing held on July 26, 2023, the parties are at an impasse and are not in agreement on either a plea agreement or a diversion agreement,” Weiss wrote.

In a separate filing, Weiss moved to dismiss the tax charges against Hunter Biden so they could be re-filed in a different venue — either Washington, D.C. or California, where Biden lived when he allegedly failed to pay income tax in 2017 and 2018. That filing reiterated the Justice Department’s pessimistic view of plea deal talks.

“The information was filed in this District [of Delaware] because the parties had previously agreed that the Defendant would waive any challenge to venue and plead guilty in this District,” Weiss wrote. “However, during the July 26, 2023, hearing that the Court set on this matter, the Defendant pled not guilty. Since that time, the parties have engaged in further plea negotiations but are at an impasse. The Government now believes that the case will not resolve short of a trial.”

The filing also signaled that federal prosecutors “may elect to bring the same charges set forth in the instant information or different ones.” In other words, they could charge the first son with crimes that are not detailed in the now-defunct plea deal.

Kyle Cheney contributed to this report.