Hunter’s Lawyers Played Hardball To Get Deal
Amid ongoing heated speculation over Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, federal prosecutors in Delaware have surprised many observers by retreating on a negotiated plea deal that would essentially have allowed Hunter Biden to avoid jail time for firearms and tax-related charges.
According to a lengthy Politico article, the negotiations for the plea deal were guided by one serious threat from Hunter's lawyers: that if the Justice Department went ahead with charging the president's son, he would call Joe Biden as a defense witness in the case—along with two IRS whistleblowers who've alleged extensive DOJ interference in probes against Hunter.
In an Oct. 31, 2022, letter to Delaware's U.S. Attorney, Chris Clark—whose team is representing Hunter Biden— argued that prosecuting Biden in such a case would not only be perceived as "purely political" by the public, it could also be unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. He then warned, "if the Justice Department charged the president's son, his lawyers would put the president on the witness stand."
Indeed, the two IRS whistleblowers, Gary Shapley, and Joseph Zeigler, provided even more impossible threats for prosecutors to ignore in their testimony about the prosecution. Shapley and Zeigler accused the DOJ of far-reaching corruption in their probes involving Hunter, with Zeigler claiming it was "the corrosion of ethical standards and the abuse of power that threaten our nation."
The ominous Spectre of having to defend Joe Biden before a court of law has spooked the Justice Department's prosecutors, who reluctantly agreed to a plea bargain that was eerily symmetrical with the one Hunter had negotiated before pleading guilty to "willfully failing to pay his taxes," with the threat of a gun charge expunged while granting him immunity from further charges.
But Judicial Watch Judge Maryellen Noreika was still hesitant to sign off on the deal, particularly regarding the immunity provision, and she urged both parties to settle on the language. Here too the Justice Department retreated, insisting that any future plea deal would have to exclude the immunity clause. The end result has been Hunter Biden's legal drama being resolved with the gun charge expunged and a lifetime ban on him buying any ammo or traveling abroad.
The DOJ's retreat from a possible Hunter Biden conviction has allowed Joe Biden to avoid an utterly untenable legal and political nightmare. But it's raised questions among critics of the Biden Administration about how the former VP's office might have applied behind-the-scenes pressures to curb the Justice Department's investigations into Hunter.
Given Attorney General Merrick Garland's pledge to allow U.S. Attorney David Weiss full independence, it may be inevitable now that Congress will call for Garland's impeachment over this matter—punishing him for ultimately not conceding enough information about the scope of Weiss's investigations into Hunter Biden.