Meet the Press anchor Chuck Todd has argued that US Attorney General Merrick Garland is the most powerful person ahead of the 2024 election.
Both the political fate of President Joe Biden and his predecessor Donald Trump depend on special counsel investigations headed by people appointed by Mr Garland.
Mr Todd appeared on Sunday Today on NBC to speak about Mr Garland putting in place a special counsel to review the classified documents from Mr Biden’s time as vice president located at his Wilmington, Delaware, home and former private office in Washington DC.
The Democrats now have to deal with the Republican outcry and claims of hypocrisy after classified documents were found during an FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago last year.
Speaking about Mr Biden’s predicament, Mr Todd told host Willie Geist that “I don’t know if it’s much of a legal problem, per se. But I think it’s a huge political problem because you don’t know where the special counsel investigation is going”.
He said the investigation into Mr Biden’s son Hunter could also be headed by a special counsel at some point over the months ahead.
“I think what it, in the short-term, means that the most powerful person in deciding what our presidential race looks like in 2024 is Merrick Garland,” Mr Todd said.
“The decisions he’s going to be making going forward about whether or not to prosecute Trump, whether or not to let folks — how far to investigate, whether to prosecute Hunter Biden and things like that, are gonna have huge impacts on Joe Biden,” he added.
Mr Todd noted that the probe into the president’s handling of classified documents puts a new focus on if Democrats want him to run for a second term, which Mr Biden, 80, has said that he intends to do.
“A week ago, [Biden] looked like, truly, not only the leader of the Democratic party, but the leader the Democrats wanted as leader of their party,” Mr Todd said. “Now this could only raise all the questions again that were all there before the midterms.”
