When it comes to Hunter Biden’s case, one of the principal problems Republicans are running into is that U.S. Attorney David Weiss, the prosecutor overseeing the case, was appointed by Donald Trump. As Weiss continues to tell GOP lawmakers what they don’t want to hear, it’s tough to incorporate him into a nefarious Democratic plot when all President Joe Biden did was allow the Republican-appointed prosecutor to remain at his post and pursue a case against his own son.
That, in turn, leaves the GOP with a choice: The party could find a new hobby, or it could go after the U.S. attorney chosen by Trump.
Republicans appear to prefer the latter.
Fox News viewers started seeing an anti-Weiss message on Tuesday, and it was around the same time when House Speaker Kevin McCarthy publicly questioned the prosecutor’s credibility.
The former president himself also weighed in by way of his social media platform:
“Weiss is a COWARD, a smaller version of Bill Barr, who never had the courage to do what everyone knows should have been done. He gave out a traffic ticket instead of a death sentence.”
In the same missive, Trump suggested “two Democrat Senators [sic] in Delaware” were to blame for Weiss’ appointment — as my colleague Lisa Rubin explained, this was an assertion that should not be taken seriously — before concluding that his own prosecutor was somehow caught up in a “cesspool of crime.”
The message was absurd, of course, but stepping back, there’s an amazing larger context to this.
Trump doesn’t mind attacking a member of his own team: When the former president lashed out at Kayleigh McEnany, his former White House press secretary, in late May, it was part of a larger pattern.
Semafor published a good report on this, highlighting several gems: “The list of failures include — among many, many, many others — his former Secretary of State (‘dumb as a rock’), multiple chiefs of staff (‘born loser,’ ‘way over his head’), multiple Attorneys General (‘coward’ ‘disaster’), multiple Defense Secretaries (‘weak’ ‘overrated’), his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (‘f***ing idiot’), his former National Security Advisor (‘moron’), his former White House Press Secretary (‘milktoast’ just this week), his former top communications aide (‘sleazebag’) the current FBI Director (‘disappointing’), and, of course, his own Vice President (no ‘courage’), who is preparing to run against him.”
This is, of course, a partial list. Weiss can take comfort in the fact that he has plenty of company. Trump has a multifaceted problem with lawyers: Some of the attorneys in the former president’s orbit are receiving unwelcome scrutiny from criminal prosecutors. Others are facing disbarment. Others are quitting. Others are prosecutors telling him what he doesn’t to hear. Trump can’t believe his own handpicked prosecutors won’t just follow his commands: Bill McSwain was a U.S. attorney in the Trump administration who failed to fully embrace the Big Lie after the 2020 election, so he faced the former president’s ire. Bill Barr was the attorney general in the Trump administration, whom the former president now sees as a “gutless pig,” among other things, for failing to go along with a scheme to overturn Trump’s defeat. Rob Hur was a U.S. attorney in the Trump administration, and the former president now considers him “an establishment hack.” David Weiss, evidently, has joined a club he probably would’ve preferred to avoid.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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