By Katelynn Richardson
Daily Caller News Foundation
Legal experts slammed the Department of Justice’s handling of Hunter Biden’s “sweetheart” plea deal Wednesday after it fell apart in court under a judge’s questioning, which revealed it to be better for Biden than initially thought.
Hunter Biden plead not guilty Wednesday after Judge Maryellen Noreika made a rare move and refused the plea deal between the Department of Justice (DOJ) and his legal team, which she had raised concerns about in part due to its “broad immunity” for potential future charges, CNN reported. The initial deal would have had Biden plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and enter a probation agreement for one felony gun charge.
Julianne Murray, an attorney representing The Heritage Foundation, which filed an amicus brief in the case Tuesday, was in the courtroom during the hearing. She told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the judge “did a really good job of sniffing out that there was stuff that was not being said out loud.”
“My sense was everybody just wanted this to just go away,” she said. “Now they know it’s not going away.”
While it’s not uncommon for plea deals to offer immunity limited to conduct “directly related” to the offense, Murray told the DCNF the offer given to Hunter Biden was “not limited in scope” and included “all of the allegations of conduct that are still being investigated,” though it was verbally amended to “limit the scope to gun, drugs and taxes from 2014-2019.”
“Whether the whole deal is off the table or not, you just can’t tell,” she said.
Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project, told the DCNF plea agreement would have caused “too much of a political backlash” if the terms revealed in court were written down.
“The Biden Justice Department’s sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden couldn’t even withstand basic questioning by a friendly Delaware federal judge,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project, told the DCNF. “That’s because we now know there was an even sweeter secret deal: today was supposed to be the end of all criminal charges involving the Biden family. They were going to protect President Biden by sweeping under the rug today in Delaware all the Biden family crimes.”
“The Biden Justice Department couldn’t write that into the plea agreement, because it would cause too much of a political backlash,” Davis continued. “And the Biden DOJ could continue to pretend they are investigating Biden crimes–and continue to protect the Bidens by rebuffing congressional inquiries under the false claim of an ‘ongoing investigation.’”
Attorney Sol Wisenberg called it “a joke” that “the prosecution and defense would disagree about the terms of the agreement in open court.”
“There should be no room for disagreement on the key terms of the agreement,” he tweeted. “So, this was either astounding incompetence or corruption on DOJ’s part. I think it is corruption.”
“[The] DOJ was about to sanction a plea deal where Hunter would get misdemeanor probation on serious tax charges plus pretrial diversion (no time served or criminal record) on the felony gun charge,” he continued. “Hunter would also get complete immunity on all other charges. And he would not have to cooperate with the government’s ongoing investigation. Totally disgraceful. Merrick Garland and David Weiss should be ashamed.”
The outcome of the Biden plea hearing is a cover story.
There is NO WAY that the two sides didn’t discuss before today whether this was a “Global Plea” or not.
The idea that Hunter’s team only learned today that other charges are still possible is idiotic.
One of two things…
— Shipwreckedcrew (@shipwreckedcrew) July 26, 2023
Former federal prosecutor and Missouri Attorney General candidate Will Scharf said it was “a scandal that Biden’s DOJ was willing to agree to this kind of a deal.”
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“Hunter wants to walk away from a decade of criminal activity, including potential [Foreign Agents Registration Act] FARA violations and other serious criminal charges, with a slap on the wrist,” he tweeted.
Lawyer and former federal prosecutor Bill Shipley tweeted that the hearing outcome “is a cover story” and that there is “no way” the two teams didn’t discuss whether other charges were still possible until today. Shipley provided two possibilities: either there was an unwritten “wink and nod” agreement he would face no further charges or the potential for future charges was an “excuse” to “to step back and talk about the case further rather than go forward.”
“This was performance art today,” Shipley tweeted. “They knew they couldn’t go forward in the face of the IRS whistleblower testimony and all the other revelations about how Hunter and Biden family members getting millions of foreign revenue.”
This story originally was published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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