Hunter Biden pled not guilty on Wednesday to gun and tax charges, refusing to accept a new plea deal laid out by prosecutors.
The original plea deal fell apart after the judge questioned if it covered future potential charges of the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation. The prosecution reportedly said the deal did not include any alleged Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) violations.
MSNBC reported the court took a ten-minute recess to determine if the two parties could quickly come to an agreement. When the deal got back on track, reports indicated it would “be more limited in scope,” only including specific charges related to tax and gun wronging. “The two sides have agreed that this deal does not shield him from potential future charges,” CNN reported.
But the judge said she was not ready to accept the plea deal and asked both the prosecutor and Hunter Biden to submit additional briefs, according to reporters inside the courthouse. The parties will have to return to court in the future.
The hearing ended with Hunter Biden pleading not guilty.
Sen. Josh Hawley told CNN the high court drama shows the plea “sweetheart” deal was flawed, and additional charges could be brought:
It’s very telling that the judge intervened here and said basically, ‘No, I’m not going to approve some sweeping blanket deal.’ … I mean, that tells you the court has serious concerns about other potential charges here, and also the scope of the deal, which has seemed outrageous from the beginning.
“This, I think, signals that they’re [sic] still very much potential for prosecution forward,” he added.
U.S. prosecutor David Weiss admitted in July that the FBI informant form alleging the Biden family bribes is part of an ongoing investigation.
Last month, Chris Clark, Hunter Biden’s attorney, appeared to have a different understanding of the status of the case. He said the plea deal meant no further charges in the future could be brought outside the of it.
NBC’s Kelly O’Donnell: “I think it’s entirely possible that the President & [Hunter Biden] might speak by phone. They speak all the time. The President always makes a point that he speaks to all of his grandchildren every day.”
What about his granddaughter in Arkansas, Kelly O? pic.twitter.com/iL2Aejvp33
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) July 26, 2023
What the deal includes and excludes is important because of IRS whistleblower allegations. They contend FARA violations were a part of the Hunter Biden criminal probe, warranting a special counsel.
As Breitbart News reported, CEFC China Energy Co., a company linked to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), paid Hunter Biden a $1 million legal retainer and $3.8 million in consulting fees. Two months later, Hunter Biden told whistleblower Tony Bobulinski that he did not want to register as a foreign agent on behalf of CEFC.
In addition, Hunter Biden sat on the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy company, from which he earned $83,000 a month. During that relationship, Hunter Biden was possibly involved in a phone call between then-Vice President Joe Biden and then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, a National Archives email shows.
Poroshenko was the Ukrainian politician that fired a prosecutor probing Burisma, and Joe Biden later bragged about the firing.
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
