Special Counsel Appointment Is Biden’s “Saturday Night Massacre”

All the major public corruption scandals in American history have their inflection points, with the most famous being Richard Nixon’s “Saturday Night Massacre” and the firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. The threat now facing Joe Biden is that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of David Weiss – the same prosecutor who cut a sweetheart plea deal with Hunter Biden that a judge later rejected – as the lead special counsel to investigate Hunter’s crimes will be a similar watershed moment when the president’s attempts to cover up his wrongdoing will instead cause the scandal to fully break through with the public.

At the onset of the probe into the Watergate break-ins in 1972, most Americans viewed the saga as a political side show and dismissed accusations of Nixon’s involvement out of hand. With the nation mired in the Vietnam War and a general election looming, a clumsy burglary attempt of a high-end Washington hotel seemed a fleeting curiosity.

Yet as the investigation dragged on and more evidence emerged implicating Nixon, the president and some of his top aides began to grow nervous. Still, however, much of the public viewed the investigation as a politically motivated effort on the part of Democrats in Congress.

That all changed on Saturday, October 20, 1973. After Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox issued a subpoena for taped Oval Office conversations, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire Cox. Instead, Richardson resigned in protest. Nixon then ordered Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox – only to have Ruckelshaus also resign.

Finally, Solicitor General Robert Bork, who had just been sworn in as Acting Attorney General, complied with Nixon’s order and fired Cox.

The incident was the beginning of the end for Nixon. Just one week after the Saturday Night Massacre, an NBC News poll found that, for the first time, a plurality of Americans supported impeaching the president. Nixon’s public image would never recover, most of his Republican allies would abandon him, and the president who carried 49 out of 50 states in his 1972 re-election effort would resign less than two years later.

As President Biden faces his own rapidly deepening scandal, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s appointment of Weiss as special prosecutor may be an even more strategic error than Nixon’s “massacre” – a mistake that is compounded by Biden’s prior bungled attempts to undermine the investigations into himself and his family.

As The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board wrote, Weiss’s appointment is another “belly flop” by Garland into the 2024 campaign. After Weiss cut a completely discredited sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden, and after IRS whistleblowers provided evidence that Weiss already failed to follow clear evidence of the Biden family’s corruption and million-dollar payouts from foreign businesses, Garland’s response is to give Weiss even more control over the investigation.

This has the unavoidable appearance of Garland attempting to shield Biden from accountability for actions that could imperil his boss’s re-election bid. Weiss was the architect of a scheme to get the president’s son off of corruption charges with a slap on the wrist, and now Garland has appointed him special prosecutor.

Law professor Jonathan Turley also pointed out that Garland’s appointment of someone who already works for the Justice Department as special prosecutor appears to violate federal law, as such positions are supposed to be filled by individuals from outside the federal government. Moreover, special prosecutors are supposed to have “a reputation for integrity and impartial decision-making,” and Weiss has repeatedly been accused of lying and having conflicts of interest.

“The Weiss appointment definitively established Garland as a failure as attorney general,” Turley concludes. “As it stands, Garland has virtually ensured that Congress will pursue an impeachment inquiry as the only body seriously investigating the scandal.”

Even Biden’s erstwhile ally Peter Baker over at The New York Times recognizes that Biden may have a serious problem on his hands. “Questions about Hunter Biden’s conduct may be harder for the White House to dismiss as politically motivated,” Baker writes. “They may even break out of the conservative echo chamber to the general public, which has largely not paid much attention until now.”

For Biden, the real danger in Weiss’s appointment is not that he will uncover “smoking gun” evidence implicating the president or a member of the First Family in criminal wrongdoing – thanks to the Hunter Biden laptop and additional revelations from House Republicans, that evidence already exists. Rather, the danger is that the glaring appearance of an attempt to cover up that evidence will place the scandal front and center in the public consciousness.

The Justice Department’s prosecutions of former President Donald Trump only add to this brewing public relations crisis for Biden. Every time another domino falls in the Biden corruption case, Democrats announce a new “bombshell” in their investigations into Trump in what has now become a transparent attempt to distract the country from the very serious problems facing the Biden family.

This was made even more clear on Friday as, just hours after Garland announced Weiss’s appointment, news leaked that Trump could be facing another indictment in Georgia. The juxtaposition of the two news stories had the undeniable appearance of an orchestrated attempt at damage control, where the media and Democrat insiders behind the Trump prosecutions think they can rescue Biden with campaign-style spin of the news cycle. But as each indictment looks shakier than the last, this strategy may be falling apart.

Some Democrats also appear to recognize the perils of Biden’s situation. In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Democrat Rep. Dean Phillips said he has “grave concerns” about Biden’s re-election bid and encouraged other Democrats to challenge him.

If a few more Democrats break rank, it becomes untenable for the media to continue carrying water for the administration, and the intelligence community can’t cover for him any longer, things could begin to snowball quickly in the wrong direction for Biden.

Of course, there are also some notable differences between Nixon’s downfall and Biden’s current crisis that could continue to help prop up the president. Unlike Nixon, Biden has a media establishment still largely eager – desperate even – to assist him in the cover-up. As AMAC Newsline previously reported, the liberal press has parroted Biden’s lies every step of the way, and thus have intertwined their fates with the president’s

Most elected Democrats will also be far more reluctant to abandon their leader than were many Republicans 50 years ago, as they too have staked their reputations on the Biden family’s integrity. It’s not just Biden’s reputation on the line, either – if Republicans’ accusations break through with the public, many will begin asking questions about what Obama knew and when concerning his vice president’s illicit activities.

The aftermath of Nixon’s resignation was an electoral bloodbath for Republicans. Democrats saw a net gain of four Senate seats, 49 House seats, and four governorships. That backlash continued two years later with the election of Jimmy Carter, whose presidency would be a disaster for the country.

It has often been said of scandals that “the cover-up is worse than the crime.” That was certainly the case for Nixon and Republicans. Now, Biden and his Democrats may be barreling toward their own electoral reckoning.

B.C. Brutus is the pen name of a writer with previous experience in the legislative and executive branches.