Date: Wednesday, 16 August 2023
Why is the U.S. Attorney in Delaware being called a ‘Special Counsel’ though the Special Counsel Law says “The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government.”?
Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)
The law under which the Joe-Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney General, Merrick Garland, appointed one of his own direct subordinates, the U.S. Attorney in Delaware, who is David Weiss, to be the ‘Special Counsel’ to investigate Hunter Biden (and possible bribery by Hunter’s father Joe Biden), is “28 CFR § 600.3 - Qualifications of the Special Counsel.”
This U.S. law says that, “The Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government.” That’s in the law so as to make certain that the Special Counsel will always be a person who is independent of the Government, which was supposed to be the reason why a Special Counsel becomes appointed in the first place. So, this appointment of David Weiss is obviously an illegal appointment, and he cannot possibly be any Special Counsel. He can’t legally be a “Special Counsel.” It’s right there, in the law itself — not something to be debated about.
Jack Goldsmith — who had worked in the G.W. Bush Administration as a lawyer to authorize waterboarding and other forms of torture to extract testimony that would fit with what the Administration was telling to the public, so as for them to use that testimony as ‘evidence’ to convince the public to invade Iraq etc. — headlined on the day of Weiss’s obviously illegal appointment, August 11th, “Unpacking the Hunter Biden Special Counsel Announcement”; and, in the section titled “How the Special Counsel Regulations Apply”, he opened with:
Section 600.3 of the special counsel regulations specify that the “Special Counsel shall be selected from outside the United States Government,” and Weiss is in the U.S. government. Attorney General Garland skirted this requirement by not appointing Weiss pursuant to the special counsel regulations. This has been the Department’s approach in other special counsel regulations.
Attorney General Barr did something instructively similar when he appointed U.S. Attorney John Durham as Special Counsel to investigate whether anyone violated federal law in connection with the investigations directed at 2016 presidential campaign activities. Barr’s Order appointing Durham invoked 28 U.S.C. §§ 509, 510, and 515 as the basis for the appointment. These statutes permit the attorney general to authorize an officer of the Department to “conduct any kind of legal proceeding” (Section 505) and to “make such provisions as he considers appropriate authorizing the performance by any other officer” of the Justice Department “of any function of the Attorney General” (Section 510). Barr thus appointed Durham pursuant to his general authorities, and then specified that the core special counsel regulations guaranteeing and specifying independence—"28 C.F.R. §§ 600.4 to 600.10”—are “applicable to the Special Counsel.” Barr thus excluded the applicability by reference of the Section (Section 600.3) that required special counsel to be appointed from outside the Department.
The Garland Order invoked the same statutory authorities. …
In other words: Goldsmith — reiterating Garland and others — ‘justifies’ this by saying that violating the Special Counsel law is okay if the appointment isn’t actually of a Special Counsel but of someone who will act and have the powers of one but not really be working under the Special Counsel law — and that this is okay because this is the way that “Special Counsels” have been appointed now for quite a while.
So: it has become standard practice for the U.S. Government to violate the law, and it is also routine now for America’s ‘news’-media to report stenographically — as-if they were truths — the Government’s lies, such as that David Weiss is ‘the Special Counsel’, though he’s no such thing.
Does this Government constitute a democracy, or instead a banana republic where the public are treated as-if they were the bananas who will be voting in this ‘democracy’, on the basis of those lies, by that Government, to represent themselves? Really? To represent themselves? Is this how that’s now being done? Routinely? This now is America’s ‘democracy’? Really?
Goldsmith says near the end of his article:
The main impact of the special counsel appointment will not be to enhance the legitimacy of the Hunter Biden investigation, but rather to enhance the political dangers to the president. As Special Counsel Weiss can, under Section 600.4(b) of the regulations, ask the attorney general for “additional jurisdiction beyond that specified in his or her original jurisdiction. …”
But “600.4(b)” is part of the Special Counsel law — and even Goldsmith has acknowledged that Weiss is no Special Counsel. Goldsmith asserts what he knows to be false, and presumes that his readers will think it (miraculously — and maybe because this is the way that the ‘news’-media have reported it) to be true.
Goldsmith currently is the Learned Hand Professor of Law at Harvard University. He teaches America’s elite lawyers.
Yes, there will be bananas. How else can one have a banana republic?
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.
