The Department of Justice (DOJ) added three charges to the prosecution against President Joe Biden’s main political opponent, one day after the DOJ’s sweetheart plea deal with the president’s son was exposed in court.
While critics of former President Donald Trump celebrated, the juxtaposition of these two events is certain to lend weight and urgency to the charge that the DOJ is rife with political bias and continues to be weaponized.
As Breitbart News reported, the plea bargain that DOJ prosecutors reached with Hunter Biden’s lawyers fell apart on Wednesday after Judge Maryellen Noreika questioned its terms. Specifically, she queried a clause in an annex to the agreement — which she was apparently only shown right before the hearing — that would have given Hunter Biden immunity from any further prosecution related to his lucrative foreign business dealings.
Here’s a wild detail from the Hunter Biden court transcript:
The infamous “paragraph 15” — which contained a stunning non-prosecution agreement for Hunter — wasn’t provided to the judge until just before the hearing.
JUDGE: “I didn’t get a copy of paragraph 15” pic.twitter.com/9ZV09LqHXa
— Vince Coglianese (@VinceCoglianese) July 27, 2023
Judge Noreika asked both the prosecution and the defense whether there was any precedent for such a deal in the history of the DOJ. Both said that they were not aware of any such precedent; it was a special agreement.
The following day, Special Counsel Jack Smith filed a superseding indictment against Trump that added three new charges, plus a new defendant, Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos de Oliveira, to the original case.
Genuinely in awe that a day after a criminal plea deal between his son, and his own DOJ fell apart because a judge went “Wait a second, we’ve never seen this kind of deal”, the President’s DOJ said “yeah let’s throw 3 more indictments on there” to his opposing party front runner
— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) July 28, 2023
The timing could be coincidental: the grand jury investigating Trump meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the U.S. Attorney’s office in Delaware is separate from the Special Counsel’s office. But both fall under the purview of Attorney General Merrick Garland. He, and his deputies, are responsible for signing off on new indictments, and he would likely have known about the generous terms being offered to Hunter Biden.
Also on Wednesday, the DOJ announced that it was dropping campaign finance charges against billionaire Democratic Party donor Sam Bankman-Fried. He still faces other charges, but the political charges are gone.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. His recent book, RED NOVEMBER, tells the story of the 2020 Democratic presidential primary from a conservative perspective. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
