Judicial Notice (08.12.23): Sun's Out, Guns Out
A slew of sexy Second Amendment rulings, a bizarre lawsuit from a Kirkland alum, Viet Dinh leaving Fox, and other legal news from the week that was.
Hello from our place in the Berkshires, where Zach and I are spending some time during these lazy days of August. We’re here with Zach’s parents, who are helping us out with newborn Chase, while my parents are taking Harlan on a Disney cruise. Grandparents are the best (seriously).
Now, on to the news, much of which emerged in so-called Friday news dumps—which is why I usually write and publish Judicial Notice over the weekend, even if it often kills my Saturdays.
Lawyer of the Week: David Weiss.
One piece of news announced on Friday afternoon was Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of David C. Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney for Delaware who has been investigating possible criminal conduct by first son Hunter Biden, as special counsel. Making Weiss a special counsel makes sense as a matter of optics: it stresses to the public the independent nature of the investigation, while responding to Republican criticism that the Biden DOJ has been going easy on Hunter.
But as a practical matter, it might not change much. As noted by Charlie Savage for the New York Times, “both Mr. Garland and Mr. Weiss have already said the prosecutor was empowered to act independently.” Perhaps the most important difference is that as special counsel, Weiss must issue a report to Attorney General Garland, who has said he intends to make as much of that report public as possible.
Many Republican politicians attacked the appointment. Representative Jason Smith (R-Mo.), chairman of House Ways and Means, said that “this appointment is meant to distract from, and slow down, our [congressional] investigations” into Hunter. Furthermore, as noted by the Wall Street Journal editorial board, “Special-counsel status is politically convenient for Messrs. Weiss and Garland because it means both men can use the excuse of an ‘ongoing investigation’ to refuse to answer questions from Congress” (which Weiss had previously said he was willing to do).
But I’m not quite as pessimistic. Please allow me to speculate, for now about the David Weiss situation (and later on in this post, about Viet Dinh’s departure from Fox).
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