Trump and Hunter Biden legal blockbusters rock Washington – but offer a contrast

Republicans have reacted to the attorney general’s special counsel move with hostility, which shows how they see any Democratic president as illegitimate

Friday would have been a big day in Washington given that former president Donald Trump’s legal team appeared in Washington for the first hearing in the criminal case relating to his efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

On one end, as my colleague Andrew Feinberg reported, Mr Trump notched a small win when Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled that a protective order would only be applied to sensitive material such as grand jury transcripts, witness interview records, and other documents that could be used to identify witnesses or that could be used to poison the pool of potential jurors responsible for his case.

Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team had wanted the protective order to cover all materials provided to his defence team during the discovery process, arguing that Mr Trump’s team wanted to litigate the case “in the press.”

The hearing was the first that will likely be a drawn-out legal circus that will inevitably rope in not just Mr Trump, but also the entire Republican Party while Mr Trump will likely try and rope in President Joe Biden as he seeks re-election.

This is to say nothing of the fact that Mr Trump will also have to deal with court cases for his case related to his handling of classified documents and his trial in Manhattan. Indeed, during a rally in New Hampshire, he called the charges “bulls***,” which prompted attendees to lead a “bulls***” chant.

Then, that afternoon, Attorney General Merrick Garland dropped another bombshell when he announced that he had granted David Weiss, the US Attorney for Delaware who had been investigating Mr Biden’s son Hunter, the status of special counsel. The announcement offered a perfect example of how the two parties have approached investigating

The announcement comes after a proposed plea deal between Mr Weiss and the younger Biden fell apart and Mr Weiss last month. Republicans openly expressed their dissatisfaction about that deal, which they considered a sweetheart deal that Mr Biden received because his father is the president of the United States.

In the same vein, Republicans, including Mr Trump, decried the decision. A spokesman for a pro-Trump PAC – who, it should be noted, nominated Mr Weiss to serve as US Attorney – said that Mr Weiss had “cut Hunter Biden an unprecedented plea deal that attempted to give Joe Biden’s corrupt son blanket immunity” and that the Department of Justice “will do whatever it takes to cover up the Biden Crime Family’s misdeeds.”

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, whose committee has been investigating Hunter Biden but has failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing on behalf of the president, said the announcement was the Department of Justice’s attempt at a “a Biden family coverup” given that the House Oversight Committee has been staging hearings about the younger Biden.

The announcement also offers a contrast in how Democrats have approached their probes of presidents of the opposite party.

During the first two years of Mr Trump’s presidency, Democrats largely hoped that Special Counsel Robert Mueller would handle investigating Mr Trump, even though he was appointed by then-deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein, whom Mr Trump nominated. Indeed, many Democrats sweated when Rep Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said Democrats would “impeach the motherf***er.”

They did so largely because Democrats wanted to avoid shedding political capital to impeach Mr Trump, though they only did so when they felt his actions were so egregious, as was the case both when he tried to extort Ukraine and incite a coup on January 6.

Throughout the investigation, Mr Trump regularly criticised the special counsel, calling his investigation a “witch hunt.” By contrast, President Biden has mostly stayed quiet about the special counsel probe into his son, seeming willing to let the process play out and not raging against Mr Weiss.

In the same respect, conservative Republicans seem to be pushing House GOP leadership toward impeaching Mr Biden or at least some other cabinet officials, despite the fact swing-district Republicans do not want that, as friends of the Inside Washington Newsletter Scott Wong and Sahil Kapur at NBC News reported.

Similarly, Mr Trump seems to want to make hay out of Mr Biden’s probes, calling him “Crooked Joe Biden,” while Mr Biden seems to want to avoid talking about Mr Trump’s legal troubles, despite Republicans saying the investigations are politically motivated.

In all likelihood, the special counsel probe into the younger Mr Biden will likely not move votes, nor will House Republicans investigations. But it does show that Republicans have come to see any Democratic president’s election as less than legitimate and any investigation into a Republican as illegitimate.