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A GAME CHANGER? The appointment of a special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden, announced when no one was paying attention last Friday afternoon, shook up the Washington political climate. It reinforced a growing likelihood that Donald Trump has a plausible path to the GOP nomination — and, perhaps, another term as president — despite his unprecedented legal challenges.
SOME REPUBLICANS REACTED ANGRILY that the special counsel is David Weiss, who helped author what they called a “sweetheart deal” earlier this summer that fell apart when Hunter Biden refused to accept terms of a plea bargain on tax and gun charges.
WEISS WILL GET EXPANDED investigative and subpoena powers just as the 2024 election campaign heats up. Democrats we spoke with over the past weekend were alarmed because special counsels often stray far from the initial charges; our sources cited the sweeping investigation that morphed from a failed Bill Clinton land deal to an eventual impeachment trial for perjury in 1999.
COULD WEISS USE HIS NEW POWERS to delve into the details of Hunter Biden’s specific business dealings with Chinese officials? Could there be charges that Hunter Biden failed to register as a foreign lobbyist, which is a felony? It’s possible that Hunter Biden will face new charges.
WE’RE NOT PERSUADED THAT JOE BIDEN faces impeachment (or conviction), but this increasingly looks like a great distraction for him, depriving the president from making an argument focused on Trump’s legal woes.
SUDDENLY, THE NARRATIVE HAS SHIFTED: This was best summarized by the New York Times reporter Peter Baker on Saturday morning. “A trial by a jury of Hunter Biden’s peers would be a spectacle that could prove distracting and embarrassing for the White House while providing more fodder to the president’s Republican critics,” Baker wrote.
AMERICAN VOTERS care more about the economy than the Hunter Biden case, but the economy hardly is a plus for the White House; the electorate still worries about inflation and President Biden gets poor grades for his handling of the economy.
WITH TRUMP LEADING OVERWHELMINGLY for the GOP presidential nomination, nervous Democrats are asking whether a challenge to Biden’s nomination is warranted. It’s sinking in among Democrats — Trump could win another term, a prospect that almost certainly would lure a serious Democratic challenger into the race by fall, just as the Hunter Biden probe is heating up.
Related: The Hunter Biden Bombshell; Mitch McConnell’s Health; the UFO Hearing
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