The White House kept reporters outside shouting distance from President Biden as he returned home from his Delaware beach house on Monday.
Several reporters attempted to shout questions at the Commander in Chief anyway over the whirring of Marine One’s propeller, but the president walked past the White House press corps without taking questions.
“Any comment on the special counsel, Mr. President?” one reporter shouted.
“Will you be handing your bank records over to Congress, President Biden?” shouted another.
On Friday, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed a special counsel to investigate the president’s son, Hunter Biden, in an unexpected move that could prove to be a headache for Biden as the 2024 election approaches.
The special counsel, David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware, was already looking into Hunter Biden’s financial dealings. He was appointed as special counsel after plea deal negotiations failed.
Hunter Biden was charged in June with two misdemeanor tax offenses and a felony firearm offense. He has pled not guilty to the tax offenses, and his legal team is pushing to keep a plea deal they reached before the special counsel was appointed that would spare him prosecution on the gun charge.
On Sunday, Biden was lambasted by critics who accused him of responding coldly to a question about the deadly wildfires in Maui, Hawaii.
During a bike ride in Rehoboth Beach on Sunday morning, Biden told reporters, “We’re looking at it,” about whether he would visit Maui.
“No comment,” the president responded later Sunday after a trip to the beach when asked about the rising death toll from the fires.
The Maui wildfire is the deadliest wildfire in the U.S. in over a century with 96 deaths so far.
“Absolutely embarrassing. The largest wildfire tragedy in modern American history, and the President has nothing significant to say about it?” wrote radiologist and National Review contributor Pradheep Shanker.
“It seems like the president should have something to say about that,” the Washington Examiner’s Byron York posted on X.
MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan called Biden’s response an “unforced error” that would “hurt him.”
On Monday, the White House blew off criticism of Biden’s beach trip during the crisis.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was asked at her daily press briefing whether the American people should see the president working during the Hawaii wildfire crisis rather than vacationing at the beach.
“You all have gotten pool reports on who the president has connected with,” Jean-Pierre responded. “The [FEMA] administrator has been there for two whole days, two whole days on the ground by the president’s request to make sure that the government has what they have, the local government has what they have, the people of Maui have what they have.”
Jean-Pierre added that the president will address the country directly on the Hawaii wildfires, although she did not say when Biden would deliver such remarks.
“You could expect to hear from the president on this issue, clearly it is something that is deeply concerning to him,” she said. “You’ll hear from the president on this … certainly, he’s the president.”
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