Biden, Republicans in tit-for-tat probes

Two probes will try to pin down former president Donald Trump

WASHINGTON (AF) — While Joe Biden’s administration has named a special counsel to oversee investigations of Donald Trump, Republicans due to take over the United States House of Representatives have pledged their own flurry of probes of the president.

So from now until presidential and legislative voting in 2024, Americans could witness a long battle between two camps accusing each other of subverting the justice system for their own political ends.

Repeating a common Trump refrain, Republican Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, for instance, said Friday on Twitter that “Joe Biden has completely weaponized the Department of Justice to attack his political opponents.”

Cruz was reacting to Attorney General Merrick Garland naming a former war crimes prosecutor, Jack Smith, as special counsel to lead two probes of Trump that have been under way for months.

One is focused on the former president’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and on the 6 January 2021 attack on the US Capitol by his supporters.

The other is an investigation into a cache of classified government documents seized in a Federal Bureau of Investigation raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida in August.

But as Trump and part of the right wing of his party denounce what they call a witch hunt, Democrats are gearing up to make the same criticism of the Republicans.

Republicans say they plan to use the power of being the controlling party in the House to launch a series of investigations, the first of them centering on the president’s son Hunter.

House of Representatives have pledged their own flurry of probes of the president.

They suspect him of engaging in shady business deals in Ukraine and China, capitalizing on his last name and his father’s influence as vice president under Barack Obama from 2009 to 2017.

“There’s no plans to subpoena Joe Biden. There are plans to subpoena Hunter Biden,” Representative James Comer said Thursday on CNN, outlining his party’s strategy.