Hunter Biden’s attorneys want the Justice Department to honor the part of his plea deal under which a felony gun charge against Biden would be dropped.
The deal was nixed last month after Federal District Judge Maryellen Noreika questioned the combination of unrelated tax and gun charges in the same agreement. The two sides could not then agree on what the deal contained.
Biden’s attorney, Chris Clark, announced the deal was dead when the Justice Department suggested that their client still was under investigation for possible violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
Some of the key parts of the two-part deal were contained in the Diversion Agreement that dealt with the gun charge instead of the plea agreement.
The Biden attorneys claim that both “parties have a valid and binding bilateral Diversion Agreement.”
“There are no ‘take backs’ once the government signs it and delivers it to court,” a member of Hunter Biden’s team told CBS News. “The prosecutors are attempting to renege on a valid agreement that they initiated, negotiated and signed before submitting it to the Court last month.”
Biden pleaded not guilty to three charges last month.
Hunter Biden Shuffles Legal Team
Biden shuffled his legal team on Monday, adding Washington attorney Abbe Lowell. Lowell previously represented Biden in a since-settled case over child support. Lowell is expected to adopt a more combative strategy toward the Justice Department.
Clark filed a motion on Tuesday with the court seeking to withdraw from representing Biden in the case.
“Based on recent developments, it appears that the negotiation and drafting of the plea agreement and diversion agreement will be contested, and Mr. Clark is a percipient witness to those issues,” the motion filed by Biden’s attorneys Tuesday said. “Under the ‘witness-advocate’ rule, it is inadvisable for Mr. Clark to continue as counsel in this case.”
AG Garland Names David Weiss as Special Counsel
Now that Attorney General Merrick Garland has given Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss special counsel status, the investigation could become more expansive. Special counsels have a tendency of expanding their investigations beyond their initial mandates.
“As special counsel, he will continue to have the authority and responsibility that he has previously exercised to oversee the investigation and decide where, when, and whether to file charges,” Garland said last Friday.
Special Counsel Appointment Not Expected to Change Things
Lowell does not see much of a change in the case despite Weiss’s change of title.
“People should keep in mind,” Lowell said, “that while Mr. Weiss’ title changed last week, he’s the same person he’s been for the last five years. He’s a Republican U.S. attorney appointed by a Republican president and attorney general who had career prosecutors working this case for five years looking at every transaction that Hunter was involved in.
“If anything changes from his conclusion, which was two tax misdemeanors and a diverted gun charge, the question should be asked, what infected the process that was not the facts in the law?”
Republicans, however, do not see Weiss as neutral, charging that he allowed politics to enter into the case and failed to prosecute Biden based on the facts, whistleblowers say.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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