Hunter Biden’s plea deal is on hold: The president’s son was scheduled to plead guilty in court on Wednesday, but the deal suddenly fell apart and will be revisited next month.
Hunter Biden Has New Problems…
Hunter Biden, the son of the president, was scheduled to appear in court Wednesday to formally enter a guilty plea related to his taxes, as part of a deal with the government announced last week.
But after a bizarre series of events, the deal is off and will be revisited in August.
According to The Washington Post, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika delayed accepting the deal that had been reached between prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s attorneys, stating the terms reached by the two sides “may not be constitutional.”
After the judge began asking questions, according to the newspaper, it became clear that the two sides had not agreed on whether the deal gave Hunter Biden immunity from future prosecution.
At issue was that the agreement had two steps, in which the younger Biden agreed to plead guilty on the tax charges, and also to a “diversion agreement” on the separate gun charges, in which he would agree to certain conditions in order to not be charged on the weapons charge.
“I have concerns about the constitutionality of this provision, so I have concerns about the constitutionality of this agreement,” the judge said, per the Post.
She added that the two sides should continue working on the agreement. And because the deal was not yet approved, Hunter Biden entered a plea of not guilty.
“That type of agreement is not typically approved by a judge. But this particular diversion agreement referenced the proposed plea deal and prosecutors submitted it to the judge, creating a bifurcated deal in which the assurances Biden wanted — that he will not be pursued for other tax or foreign lobbying charges — were not part of the tax case, but part of the gun diversion agreement, lawyers said in court,” the Post said.
Adding to the bizarreness of the day, per Politico, was an order by Judge Noreika stating that an employee of the firm that represents Hunter Biden had “called the court clerk’s office and falsely claimed to work for a Republican lawyer in the hopes of persuading the clerk to remove documents that apparently contained Biden’s personal tax information.”
The attorney in question is not a member of the legal team in the case, although she does work for the same firm as lawyers who do. She also issued a sworn declaration that she is “completely confident” that she never indicated she worked for the other office.
It’s not clear if that incident had anything to do with the plea agreement falling apart.
“It appears that the caller misrepresented her identity and who she worked for in an attempt to improperly convince the Clerk’s Office to remove the amicus materials from the docket,” the judge wrote, according to Politico.
The firm strongly denied that this was the case, describing the incident as an “unfortunate and unintentional miscommunication.”
As usual, there are political questions related to Hunter Biden and the resolution of this case. This week, Semafor looked into the question of whether voters actually care about the travails of the presidential son.
Semafor cited Club for Growth polling finding that more than 60 percent of voters believe both that they’re worried about “illegal drugs appearing in the White House” and that President Biden should acknowledge that the daughter he fathered with a woman between his marriages is his grandchildren.
“If it looks like Hunter Biden received money to influence his dad,” Club For Growth President David McIntosh told Semafor, “Republicans will make it a big issue and I think voters will care about it.”
Of course, the premise of that question implies that it was Hunter Biden who left the cocaine in the West Wing, and it has not been anything close to established that this is the case.
Semafor added that there is little indication that Democrats or independents are much moved by the focus on Hunter.
“Democrats and independents just don’t really hold Joe Biden responsible for Hunter,” Chris Jackson, a senior VP at Ipsos, told Semafor. “We’ll see, right? There’s over a year to go before the election, but so far they aren’t changing.”
“Independents and Democrats have zero interest in Hunter Biden — zero,” veteran pollster Frank Luntz said in the story. “It didn’t matter in 2020 or 2022, either. Republicans are a different matter. To them, anything that reflects badly on any Biden is a good thing.”
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Stephen Silver is a Senior Editor for 19FortyFive. He is an award-winning journalist, essayist and film critic, who is also a contributor to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Broad Street Review and Splice Today. The co-founder of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle, Stephen lives in suburban Philadelphia with his wife and two sons. Follow him on Twitter at @StephenSilver.
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