Attorney General Merrick Garland on Friday appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware as special counsel in the case, a move that could rebut Republican criticism that the process had been politicized.

“Mr. Weiss advised me that in his judgment, his investigation has reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a special counsel,” Garland said in a statement. Given the “extraordinary circumstances” of the case, Garland said, “I have concluded it is in the public interest.”

The development carries with it significant new legal peril for the president’s son, who may now face multiple felony charges. It also brings dramatic consequences for his father, who has been unable to shake the political albatross of his son’s continuing legal troubles. And it will prompt new and urgent questions about the Justice Department’s handling of the investigation.

A few weeks ago, such a chain of events seemed improbable. The federal investigation into the younger Biden’s taxes appeared to be closing as lawyers on both sides stood in front of a judge in Delaware hoping she would sign off on the plea agreement they had reached. Hunter Biden would plead guilty to two tax-related charges and also admit to the facts of a gun charge.

The judge, however, questioned aspects of the deal, including what immunity from future charges the agreement afforded Hunter Biden, and said it wasn’t ready for her signature. She asked both sides to continue discussing a plea agreement and return to her with a new proposal.

Prosecutors said Friday they tried to arrange a fresh agreement, but reached an impasse with Biden’s attorneys. People familiar with the case said the question raised by the judge at Biden’s failed guilty plea hearing could not be resolved by the two sides because they could not agree on clear language about what potential future charges he would be immune to if he pleaded guilty.

“The Government now believes that the case will not resolve short of a trial,” prosecutors wrote in a filing Friday.

Before the proposed agreement fell apart, Hunter Biden had tentatively agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay in 2017 and 2018. A court document says that in both those years, Biden was a resident of Washington and received taxable income of more than $1.5 million, for which he owed more than $100,000 in tax that he did not pay on time.

On the gun charge, Hunter Biden was expected to sign a pretrial diversion agreement, which means he would technically not plead guilty to the allegations. Biden is accused of falsely saying on a gun purchase form in 2018 that he was not using drugs even though he had publicly admitted to using drugs that year. Diversion agreements are often applied to nonviolent offenders with substance abuse problems.

If the deal had gone through, prosecutors would likely not have been able to pursue additional tax charges against Hunter Biden.

Barbara McQuade, who served as U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan from 2010-2017, said the scuttling of the plea agreement and the prospect of a trial is likely what prompted Weiss to ask for special counsel status, which frees him to re-file charges against Hunter Biden in another jurisdiction.

“It could mean just these same charges or something more serious, and it’s probably more likely to be something more serious,” McQuade said in an interview. “If you have a guilty plea, it’s usually some sort of settlement or resolution, especially in a misdemeanor. In my practice, it’s very rare to file criminal charges for unpaid taxes — that’s usually resolved as a civil matter.”

The developments Friday were a major turn in the long-standing federal investigation of Hunter Biden, which has created a political distraction for President Biden amid GOP efforts to tie him to his son’s alleged misconduct as he runs for reelection. Republicans have not presented evidence that the president was involved in any wrongdoing.

A White House official said they had no advance notice of Garland’s announcement. The White House counsel’s office declined to comment on the developments, referring questions to the Department of Justice and Hunter Biden’s personal attorneys.

Garland announced the special counsel appointment during a midday news conference at Justice Department headquarters in Washington. Weiss, an appointee of former president Donald Trump’s who began the investigation of Hunter Biden in 2018 and has continued to lead the prosecution under Garland.

The announcement was met with a swift rebuke from Republican leaders, who said that Weiss could not be trusted to lead the investigation.

Russell Dye, a spokesperson for House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), questioned in a statement whether Weiss could be trusted going forward to prosecute the case.

“This is just a new way to whitewash the Biden family’s corruption,” Dye said. “Weiss has already signed off on a sweetheart plea deal that was so awful and unfair that a federal judge rejected it.”

Justice officials said that Weiss requested Tuesday to be named special counsel and that Garland agreed. Weiss will hold this position while he continues to serve as the U.S. attorney in Delaware, Garland said. The appointment requires Weiss to have regular check-ins with Garland and to submit a report at the conclusion of the investigation to Garland.

Garland has maintained that Weiss has wielded full authority to make independent decisions throughout the Hunter Biden investigation. The attorney general did not delineate Friday how special counsel status would notably change Weiss’s authority.

The appointment could clarify whether Weiss can bring charges in states outside Delaware. An IRS agent who supervised the investigation told Congress this year that Weiss had said he could not bring charges outside Delaware.

Justice Department officials have said this is the first time that Weiss has asked for special counsel status.

“As special counsel, he will continue to have the authority and responsibility that he has exercised previously to oversee the investigation and decide where, when and whether to file charges,” Garland said Friday.

Hunter Biden’s attorney, Chris Clark, said in a statement Friday that he is not aware of any wrongdoing that Biden committed outside of Delaware that could be prosecuted. The statement seemed to hold out hope that the case could still be resolved with a plea, even as prosecutors said they did not believe that would happen.

“It is hard to see why [Weiss] would have proposed such a resolution if there were other offenses he could have successfully prosecuted, and we are aware of none,” Clark said. “We are confident when all of these maneuverings are at an end my client will have resolution and will be moving on with his life successfully.”

Democrats said Friday that Garland’s decision would make it more difficult for Republicans to convince the public that the legal case has been politically tainted to protect the president.

In June, an IRS agent who supervised the investigation into Hunter Biden told lawmakers that Justice Department officials slowed and stymied the investigation and did not pursue more serious tax charges against Biden in Washington and California — even though the agent said there was enough evidence to charge him there.

The agent said that Weiss had told investigators that he could not file charges outside Delaware. Garland and Weiss have denied the whistleblowers claims. Some of the tax crimes that the whistleblower said investigators had wanted to pursue can no longer be charged because of the statute of limitations has expired.

This is the third special counsel that Garland has appointed during his tenure. In November, he appointed Jack Smith as the special counsel overseeing the two federal investigations into Trump. And in January, he appointed Rob Hurr as special counsel to investigate the handling of classified documents found at a former office and the Delaware home of President Biden.

McQuade said Weiss could potentially be ready to present charges to a grand jury quickly, meaning a trial for Hunter Biden could take place in about a year – next summer or fall, as the 2024 presidential campaign enters the stretch run.

That could set up a split screen, with Republicans trying to make Hunter Biden’s legal woes comparable to those of Trump, who is facing three separate indictments, including two from the federal government — his alleged mishandling of classified documents and his involvement in attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

In the court filings Friday, Weiss went “out of his way to say, ‘We’re doing a trial,’” McQuade said. “It may be that David Weiss knows there’s a lot of public interest in what’s happening in this case, and he may have chosen to use this moment to offer more information.”