Republicans Lie Their Asses Off After Hunter Biden Plea Debacle. Also Before And During.
Well, at least they're consistent.
Yesterday, Hunter Biden showed up at the US District Court in Delaware for what was supposed to be a pro forma plea hearing which would have put his legal troubles behind him. In fact, it turned out to be anything but, and the president’s son wound up pleading “not guilty” and ripping up the plea deal his team negotiated.
The hearing was the culmination of months of back and forth between Hunter Biden’s lawyers and prosecutors working under US Attorney David Weiss, who was tasked by then-Attorney General Bill Barr with investigating then-candidate Joe Biden’s screw-up son. Hunter Biden was set to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and agree to enter a diversionary program for the felonious possession of a gun at a time when he was addicted to drugs. Don’t try to get your mind around Republicans demanding to LOCK HER UP someone for possessing a gun at the same time they’re trying to get rid of all gun laws — this way madness lies.
But shortly after the hearing began, it became clear that something was amiss. The New York Times describes the chaos in the courtroom:
Judge [Maryellen] Noreika quickly zeroed in on a paragraph offering Mr. Biden broad immunity from prosecution, in perpetuity, for a range of matters scrutinized by the Justice Department. The judge questioned why prosecutors had written it in a way that gave her no legal authority to reject it.
Then, in 10 minutes of incisive questioning, she exposed serious differences between the two sides on what, exactly, that paragraph meant.
Christopher Clark, Mr. Biden’s lead lawyer, said it indemnified his client not merely for the tax and gun offenses uncovered during the inquiry, but for other possible offenses stemming from his lucrative consulting deals with companies in Ukraine, China and Romania.
Prosecutors had a far narrower definition. They saw Mr. Biden’s immunity as limited to offenses uncovered during their investigation of his tax returns dating back to 2014, and his illegal purchase of a firearm in 2018, when he was a heavy drug user, they said.
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.”
Attorney Ken White (AKA “Popehat”) has an excellent write-up at his Substack, but, in short, there was no meeting of the minds here, and thus no agreement. Hunter Biden thought he was getting clear of all pending and future charges, and the government thought not that. So Judge Noreika rejected the deal.
The Wall Street Journal clarified that Judge Noreika, a Trump appointee, was also concerned that the plea deal appeared to put her in the position of supervising Biden’s recovery:
Then the judge pressed both sides on provisions included in both prongs of the agreement, including why the tax deal was brought under a statute that removes the court’s ability to vet it, while the gun deal includes a requirement that the court decide whether Hunter Biden has breached the deal. Judge Noreika said that could inappropriately put her in the position of making a decision normally left for prosecutors.
“I have concerns about the constitutionality of this provision, so I have concerns about the constitutionality of this agreement,” she said.
And of course you can’t divorce the hearing from the political circus that surrounds it, thanks to Republicans’ desperate attempt to destroy President Biden through his son. Recent efforts by the House GOP to prove that Biden is corrupt have included: presenting a Chinese spy flogging an obviously fake text message as a credible witness; releasing an unverified report from a confidential informant laundering Rudy Giuliani’s long-debunked claims about Hunter Biden’s relationship with Ukrainian oil company Burisma; and showing a picture of Hunter Biden’s penis on the House floor. Their current star witnesses are a pair of IRS “whistleblowers” who think they know more about trying cases than career prosecutors and whose testimony has been refuted by Weiss himself.
So of course these goons tried to ratfuck this plea deal!
In this case, the rat dicks came in the form of amicus briefs filed Tuesday by Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, and the Heritage Foundation. In a letter accompanying the Heritage Foundation’s proposed brief, its chief Hunter Biden shitstirrer Mike Howell promised information “that has not, and likely will not, be presented to the Court by either the Government or the Defendant.”
But the House GOP went one better, including a report from Ways and Means which included tax and Social Security information from Biden’s tax returns. Smith’s lawyer Ted Kittila filed it unredacted, and, when Biden’s lawyers objected, told them to go pound sand. The litigation support staffer out of the New York office of Latham & Watkins, another firm representing Biden, called up the Delaware court to see what the procedure was to get personal information redacted. But somehow the clerk understood her to be saying that was from Kittila’s office, and took down the amicus brief.
Kittila then wrote to the court and accused Latham of impersonating his office, posting on the public docket an email which redacted the name and contact information of the court clerk, but publishing the name and direct line of the Latham staffer who’d contacted the court. Because Ted Kittila is a dick. To be clear, it would be career suicide to do what Kittila accused Latham of doing, and the ground would come up at you almost immediately — for one thing, you get an immediate notification from the court regarding changes to the docket, which is how Kittila knew that his amicus had been taken down.
Nevertheless, Kittila’s accusation (along with the clerk’s apparent confusion) prompted a furious show cause order Tuesday night from Judge Noreika, who threatened to sanction Latham if it didn’t explain itself pronto. After affidavits from the Latham staffer, and a letter from the partner appearing in the case, the kerfuffle seems to have died down. But not before conservative media got a news cycle out of it, accusing Hunter Biden’s lawyers of committing a fraud on the court.
(Honestly, Judge Noreika behaved pretty rashly here. She does not appear to be enjoying the spotlight in this case.)
Kittila’s shenanigans did not manage to delay the trial, and Biden’s lawyers have moved to redact the amicus brief. But it did contribute to Republicans’ ability to spin it.
Naturally, Rep. Jim Jordan claimed credit for derailing the plea deal.
"I think it's all driven by the whistleblowers and just how credible those individuals are, and the fact that their testimony has not wavered," he told CNN. "It's been consistent, unlike the White House. Their story, unlike the Department of Justice, their story, and of course, the whistleblower testimony is backed up by the FBI agent who was … interviewed a little over a week ago."
“Hunter Biden’s plea deal blew up because of ongoing investigations into Biden family corruption,” Sen. Ted Cruz lied on Twitter. “Since the announcement of the sweetheart deal, new whistleblowers have provided treasure troves of new evidence. This is why the DOJ has made an enormous backtrack on the deal.”
The parties are due back in court a month from now. At which point Donald Trump will be probably be facing four criminal indictments, so … look for the GOP bullshit machine to kick into maximum chaos mode.
[NYT / OpenArgs / Popehat Report / WSJ / CNN / US v. Biden, Docket via Court Listener]
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So I read the whole Popehat thing including the links and honestly I think the judge did Hunter Biden a solid here. I wanted to hate on her, on account of the Trump appointee thing and the Tom Cotton supporting thing, and I’ll probably still hate on her for that second one, but she was *Not Wrong* here and it’s clear she was the only attorney in that room who was thinking the plea and diversion agreements through.
It’s funny to me that Trump might have accidentally appointed someone competent.
Why would they do this? What was coming up tomorrow?
Scalise: "[Republicans] will be here standing to make the call, to make the tough votes, to get that work done." [Republicans cheer loudly]
Scalise announced moments ago that Republican leadership has cancelled votes tomorrow and will begin a six-week House recess a day early