Former federal prosecutor lays out plan to improve DOJ's future probes into political figures

Former federal prosecutor Andrew Weissman, who helped lead former special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, laid out his thoughts on how to improve the process of investigating political figures and their families on MSNBC's Deadline: Legal blog Wednesday.

His key suggestion? Stop relying so heavily on special counsels, and just let career prosecutors in the ordinary chain of command do their job when they are capable of doing so.

"In what is presumably an effort to ensure the Hunter Biden probe is apolitical in both appearance and reality, Attorney General Merrick Garland has essentially offloaded his responsibilities in the case," wrote Weissman. "He’s done the same for three other high-profile Justice Department investigations: the two probes related to Joe Biden’s and Donald Trump’s respective handling of government documents, and the one into Trump’s actions surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection."

The big problem, Weiss argued, is that all the effort to create the appearance of impartiality doesn't really matter, because Republicans are just going to claim any investigation against them is rigged, as is any investigation of Democrats that doesn't produce the results they want.

"I’m not really sure these procedural protections put in place by the DOJ are effectively buying public acceptance, at least not with a substantial portion of the electorate," wrote Weissman. "These appointments didn’t stop certain Republicans from attacking [Delaware prosecutor Andrew] Weiss’ charging decision in the Hunter Biden case. It doesn’t stop the attack on [Jack] Smith’s classified documents case, and it won’t stop an attack on [special counsel Robert] Hur if he declines to prosecute Joe Biden."

"Many people ignore the fact that Weiss — and not Garland or the White House — ultimately decided if and how to charge Hunter Biden," wrote Weissman. "They claim the president's son received a 'sweetheart' deal — but ignore that a Trump appointee was behind it. Some will claim Weiss isn't a true Trumper at heart — the same type of attack made against special counsel Robert Mueller (for whom I worked), even though he is a lifelong Republican. And others simply do not believe Garland and/or the White House were not involved in the decision, even without any supporting proof."

Given all of that, argued Weiss, the DOJ might be better off simply having the ordinary command of DOJ officials investigate, make decisions, and explain them. "One has to wonder if that would not serve us better," he concluded.