Attorney General Merrick Garland's appointment of U.S. Attorney David Weiss as special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden was a "chess move," former acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker said on Newsmax Saturday.
"I thought I actually was mishearing things when he announced that it was David Weiss," Whitaker told Newsmax's "Saturday Report." "This is a chess move by Merrick Garland. He's being backed into a corner by Rep. [James] Comer and others who are investigating and finding significant evidence."
Garland announced Weiss' appointment Friday after a plea deal the attorney had worked on for Hunter Biden fell apart, drawing fire from Republicans who said the appointment was done to hinder the congressional investigation into President Joe Biden's son.
Whitaker said Saturday that the plea agreement that had been reached was "like nothing anyone has ever seen before."
"I've been calling for a special counsel for over a year," he added. "This is too little, too late ... it's just a way for them to kick the can down the road and for Merrick Garland to try to save his reputation. But he is so tainted and so political now that nothing is going to save him in the annals of history."
Whitaker also agreed that the special counsel appointed to investigate Hunter Biden should have been someone from outside the Department of Justice, adding that anything Weiss does now will be suspicious, particularly because of the plea deal and that he "tried to cover Hunter."
It's also time for Congress to press harder than they already have been doing, he said.
"One of the reasons to appoint a special counsel is so they can stonewall Congress and say that this is an ongoing investigation," said Whitaker. "But at the end of the day, it's just a way for them to continue to continue to possibly blow statutes of limitation and never really bring Hunter Biden to justice."
Whitaker also discussed U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan's ruling in Washington, D.C., that former President Donald Trump can share some of the evidence from his upcoming trial on charges tied to the 2020 election, with his agreeing not to intimidate or threaten any witnesses in the case by using inflammatory statements.
Whitaker called that part of the ruling a potential violation of First Amendment rights to freedom of speech.
"The First Amendment is first for a reason," he said. "It is the bedrock of what our Founding Fathers for the last 247 years believed was the thing that was going to keep us a free people."
Trump, he added, is "entitled to share what he's thinking" and to communicate; and as he's a leading candidate in the presidential race, his free speech rights should be protected.
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