Hunter Biden’s attorneys trying to save plea deal
Agreement on gun charge still in place, court filing says
WASHINGTON — Attorneys for Hunter Biden are pushing to keep part of a plea deal they reached with the prosecutor whose new status as special counsel has intensified the tax investigation into the president’s son ahead of the 2024 election.
As House Republicans continued their own investigations, Biden’s attorney argued in court documents that an agreement sparing him from prosecution on a felony gun charge still is in place even though the plea deal on misdemeanor tax offenses largely unraveled during a court appearance last month.
His lawyer argues that the Justice Department decided to “renege” on its end of the deal on tax charges. The agreement on the gun charge also contains an immunity clause against federal prosecution for some other potential crimes.
Biden plans to abide by the terms of that agreement, including not using drugs or alcohol, attorney Christopher Clark said in court papers filed late Sunday. Prosecutors who “largely dictated” the agreement after inviting them to begin plea negotiations in May should also be bound by it, he argued.
It’s unclear whether prosecutors agree that the gun agreement remains valid. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika ordered them to respond by today. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
Noreika is largely responsible for the unwinding of an agreement that Republicans have slammed as a “sweetheart deal” aimed at shielding the president’s troubled son from the consequences of not paying taxes on millions he earned representing companies in Ukraine and China.
The investigation appeared to be coming to a close in June, when both sides announced they had reached a deal. But during a hearing in Delaware last month, where the agreement was supposed to be finalized, Biden’s lawyers and newly
appointed special counsel David Weiss’ prosecutors indicated drastically different views of a provision that offered Biden some level of immunity. The judge put the matter on hold, stunning the participants with her skepticism, and she refused to green-light the deal until she received more information from both parties.
“You all are saying, ‘Just rubber-stamp the agreement,’” the judge said. “I’m not in a position to accept or reject it. I need to defer.”
In the weeks that followed, both sides tried to salvage the deal. Weiss, in court papers Friday, raised the possibility that he would take Biden to trial on the tax charges.
Since 2018, Weiss has investigated a wide array of accusations involving Hunter Biden’s business and personal life, including his foreign dealings, drug use and finances. But as special counsel, Weiss, who is also the U.S. attorney in Delaware, can pursue charges in any jurisdiction he chooses without seeking the cooperation of local federal prosecutors.
In an announcement Friday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said Weiss had concluded that the investigation has reached a stage in which the powers of a special counsel were necessary. He did not explain what Weiss meant.
“The appointment of Mr. Weiss reinforces for the American people the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters,” Garland said. “I am confident that Mr. Weiss will carry out his responsibility in an evenhanded and urgent manner and in accordance with the highest traditions of this department.”
The government said plea negotiations had broken down, filed to dismiss the tax charges against Hunter Biden in Delaware and indicated they could charge him instead in another court, like in Washington, D.C., or California.
Under the plea deal, Biden would plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and enroll in the diversion program, which would have allowed him to avert prosecution on a gun charge.
But in the filing late Sunday, Biden rebutted the prosecutor’s claim, saying he had signed the agreement in court last month and that he planned to abide by it.
Clark, in a three-page response to the government’s motion to scrap the entire deal, accused Weiss of deciding to “renege on the previously agreed-upon plea agreement.”
The plea deal had an unusual two-part structure: The younger Biden had agreed to admit to two misdemeanor tax crimes as part of a standard guilty plea, while the felony gun charge, based on his purchase of a handgun at a time he was abusing drugs, would be handled as a diversion case — meaning that if he stayed sober and adhered to other conditions for two years, the charge would be dropped.
Diversion deals are typically used in cases involving nonviolent defendants with substance abuse problems. But unlike guilty pleas, a diversion deal is struck solely between prosecutors and a defendant and does not require a judge’s approval. In Biden’s case, some key terms of the two-part deal between the president’s son and the prosecutors were contained in the diversion, rather than the guilty plea agreement, which ultimately led to the collapse of the broader deal at a hearing in late July.
In their new filing, Biden’s lawyers insisted that they did not misunderstand the terms of the deal, saying prosecutors’ claims in court differed from what they said privately during negotiations.
“The Defendant’s understanding of the scope of immunity agreed to by the United States was and is based on the express written terms of the Diversion Agreement,” Biden’s lawyers wrote. “His understanding of the scope of immunity agreed to by the United States is also corroborated by prosecutors’ contemporaneous written and oral communications during the plea negotiations.”
Before the proposed agreement fell apart, Hunter Biden tentatively agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay in 2017 and 2018. A court document says that in both of those years, Biden was a resident of Washington and received taxable income of more than $1.5 million, for which he owed more than $100,000 in taxes that he did not pay on time.
Wyn Hornbuckle, a spokesperson for the special counsel, had no comment.
TROUBLED HISTORY
Hunter Biden’s history of drug use and financial dealings have trailed the political career of his father, President Joe Biden. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said of the president Monday, “He loves his son and he is proud of him overcoming his addiction and how he’s continuing to build his life.”
House Republicans are pursuing their own congressional investigations into nearly every facet of Hunter Biden’s business dealings and the Justice Department’s handling of the case. They released a transcript of an interview with a former FBI agent who worked on the case and said he was unable to interview Hunter Biden after FBI officials notified the Secret Service ahead of time in 2020. That underscored similar testimony from IRS agents-turned-whistleblowers and adds to Republicans’ lack of confidence in the Justice Department and Weiss as special counsel, Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer said.
House Democrats, though, pointed to several instances where the unnamed former FBI agent testified that he has never known Weiss or any of the assistant U.S. attorneys in Delaware to make decisions based upon political influence — a point that directly undermines Republican claims of political interference in the Hunter Biden case.
Republicans have denounced Hunter Biden’s plea agreement as a “sweetheart deal.” It had called for him to plead guilty to failing to pay taxes on more than $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018 and get probation rather than jail on the misdemeanor counts. A separate agreement was to spare him prosecution on the felony crime of being a drug user in possession of a gun in 2018 if he kept out of trouble for two years.
The surprise appointment about Weiss as special counsel raised fresh questions about the case. Garland said Weiss had asked to be named special counsel.
It comes against the backdrop of the Justice Department’s unprecedented indictments against former President Donald Trump, who is President Biden’s chief rival in next year’s election.
The cases differ significantly: Trump has been indicted and is awaiting trial in two separate cases brought by special prosecutor Jack Smith. One is over Trump’s refusal to turn over classified documents stored at his Mar-a-Lago estate. The other involves charges of fraud and conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
In the case of Hunter Biden, prosecutors have not made any accusations or charges against the president in investigating the affairs of his son. House Republicans have been trying to connect Hunter Biden’s work to his father, but have not been able to produce evidence to show any wrongdoing.
Asked whether Weiss’ investigation would unearth any new information about whether the president was involved with Hunter Biden’s business dealings, Jean-Pierre said: “The president was not in business with his son. That still stands. And I just don’t have anything else to add.”