Yesterday Delaware US District Judge Maryellen Noreika nixed a plea deal negotiated between Hunter Biden attorney Chris Clark and the prosecutor team from Joe Biden's Department of Justice.
Hunter Biden is accused of two tax misdemeanors and wrongdoing in a gun case.
The deal was constructed in an unusual way that would have given Hunter Biden immunity over additional accusations of not having registered as a foreign agent under the FARA law.
The tax and gun cases were split and the judge would have only been given judicial oversight over the tax issue plea while the immunity part was hidden in the gun case plea deal, a diversion agreement, where the judicial oversight would have stayed with the prosecutor. The wide ranging immunity part would thus have been hidden from the public.
The well explained legal technicalities can be found in this tweet:
Will Scharf @willscharf – 10:35 UTC · Jul 27, 2023
Based on conversations with people who were in the courtroom today, and my experience as a former federal prosecutor, I think I know the full story of what happened with the Hunter Biden plea agreement blow-up this morning.
Bear with me, because this is a little complicated: … Show more:
The results of the dirty deal would have been very generous for Hunter but the judge didn't fall for the trick:
Will Scharf @willscharf – 10:35 UTC · Jul 27, 2023
…
Judge Noreika smelled a rat. She understood that the lawyers were trying to paint her into a corner and hide the ball. Instead, she backed DOJ and Hunter's lawyers into a corner by pulling all the details out into the open and then indicating that she wasn't going to approve a deal as broad as what she had discovered.DOJ, attempting to save face and save its case, then stated on the record that the investigation into Hunter was ongoing and that Hunter remained susceptible to prosecution under FARA. Hunter's lawyers exploded. They clearly believed that FARA was covered under the deal, because as written, the pretrial diversion agreement language was broad enough to cover it. They blew up the deal, Hunter pled not guilty, and that's the current state of play.
And so here we are. Hunter's lawyers and DOJ are going to go off and try to pull together a new set of agreements, likely narrower, to satisfy Judge Noreika. Fortunately, I doubt if FARA or any charges related to Hunter's foreign influence peddling will be included, which leaves open the possibility of further investigations leading to further prosecutions.
The court scene, with more drama, as described by the NY Times:
When the judge asked Leo Wise, a lead prosecutor in the case, if the investigation of Mr. Biden was continuing, he answered, “Yes.”
When she asked him, hypothetically, if the deal would preclude an investigation into possible violation of laws regulating foreign lobbying by Mr. Biden connected with his consulting and legal work, he replied, “No.”
Mr. Biden then told the judge he could not agree to any deal that did not offer him broad immunity, and Mr. Clark popped up angrily to declare the deal “null and void.”
The deal the prosecutors had agreed to was very unusual and smelled of influence from above:
Noreika also questioned whether she could lawfully make the kind of determination spelled out in the documents, given that she is not a party to the diversion agreement and that judges generally are not responsible for pursuing criminal charges.
“I have concerns about the constitutionality of this provision, so I have concerns about the constitutionality of this agreement,” she said in court.
The judge also asked prosecutors if there was any precedent for a provision constructed this way. No, the prosecutor replied.
The prosecutors should be fired for offering an unprecedented sweetheart deal to the son of the sitting president and for trying to trick the court into agreeing with it.
Clark, Hunter's lawyer, is also under fire. Days before some Republican Members of Congress had filed an amicus brief with the court's clerk. It included testimony from two IRS whistle blowers who allege that Hunter Biden's tax case had also received 'special' treatment.
A person from Clark's office then called the clerk, claimed to be with the office of Theodore Kittila, the lawyer who handled the case for Congress, and asked to remove the whistle blower evidence from the file. The clerk did so but Kittila got notice of it:
“[A]t approximately 1:30 p.m., we received word that our filing was removed from the docket,” Kittila said. “We promptly contacted the Clerk’s office, and we were advised that someone contacted the Court representing that they worked with my office [emphasis original] and that they were asking the Court to remove this from the docket. We immediately advised that this was inaccurate. The Clerk’s Office responded that we would need to re-file. We have done so now.”
The New York Post has the full take of the story. The judge was miffed as Clark called this dirty trick a 'misunderstanding' but has not yet decided what to do about it:
In an evening order, Noreika gave Hunter’s attorneys until 9 p.m. to “show cause as to why sanctions should not be considered for misrepresentations to the Court” — while noting they had not formally filed any request to seal evidence in the matter.
Under Joe Biden the IRS and the Department of Justice are bending the laws and precedents to make the doings of his son Hunter Biden look less crooked than they are. The lawyer of Biden's son plays dirty tricks to remove evidence from the court's case against him. Luckily the judge seems to have no sympathy for either.
Should the Republicans decide to impeach Biden over all the issues related to this son's 'businesses' they will hear a lot of applause for making their case.