OPINION:
The remarkable plotline in Hunter Biden’s imploded plea hearing July 26 was validating the testimony of two IRS whistleblowers detested by Democrats and President Biden.
Democrats have made it clear in public hearings they want an end to brave souls inside the swamp coming forward to challenge the Washington liberal media/political establishment to talk about Biden administration skulduggery.
The president has made it clear that anyone who targets him or his family is in trouble. “No one f—ks with a Biden,” he said to a guy one day with a microphone nearby.
This is apart from son Hunter’s threats. In a WhatsApp message to a rich Chinese Communist Party official, Hunter warned him that unless millions were wired to him, the man’s life would be a living hell. He added that his father was sitting right there as he typed.
Two IRS informants — Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler — told a House committee that Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice and his U.S. attorney in Delaware, David Weiss, had the fix in to spare Hunter tough punishment and to spare the president altogether.
President Biden was explicitly off-limits. A Weiss attorney tipped off Hunter’s legal team that the IRS wanted to inspect his storage locker stuffed with paperwork from his investment/law firm called Owasco.
Justice was on board to file felony tax fraud charges against Hunter based on IRS evidence — and then took the whole thing back. Biden-appointed U.S. attorneys in California and D.C. refused to file tax charges as required because of Mr. Weiss’ Delaware-confined jurisdiction.
We’re talking big money here. Hunter, following then-Vice President Joe Biden around the globe, raked in millions from some unsavory characters: wealthy Chinese embedded with the communist police state, a Ukrainian oligarch who wanted the vice president to protect him, a Romanian real estate magnate who got Hunter to intervene for him in Washington, and the billionaire Russian widow of a corrupt Moscow mayor.
Republicans say it was a calculated Biden family operation to parlay the vice president with influencing peddling to get rich.
Now, to the July 26 hearing in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware.
Judge Maryellen Noreika is not necessarily in the Watergate Judge John Sirica history books. But like the IRS whistleblowers, Judge Noreika did her duty.
She asked Hunter’s and Mr. Weiss’ legal teams questions about what was supposed to be a sacrosanct, fast-tracked plea deal. (Her actions immediately placed her on the liberal media enemies list, joining the IRS whistleblowers and their kin, FBI whistleblowers.)
Here is what her professional questioning uncovered.
First, there are two plea deals, not one.
The first is for Hunter’s tax fraud, two misdemeanors that might normally fetch felonies.
The second is for felony illegal gun possession.
The charge actually means nothing because it’s a “diversion agreement” in which the case eventually vanishes.
Judge Noreika said she never saw parts of the deal until shortly before the hearing.
More flabbergasting, the gun deal contains promises not to prosecute — not on the gun charge, but on the tax case.
“I want to know, has anyone made you any promises that are not contained in the written memorandum of plea agreement,” the judge demanded.
“Yes, there are promises from the government in the diversion agreement, your honor,” answered defense attorney Christopher Clark.
The sweetheart deal that Republicans complained about just got sweeter.
A perplexed Judge Noreika said immunity would normally be in a standard plea agreement. “So tell me, how do these agreements relate? Are they part of a package deal?” she asked.
And then she got to the nub. “Do you have any precedent for agreeing not to prosecute crimes that have nothing to do with the case or the charges being diverted?”
Here is the answer from Mr. Weiss’ prosecutor, Leo J. Wise: “I’m not aware of any, your honor.”
The Biden Department of Justice carved out an extra special sweetheart deal for Hunter Biden that has never ever been done before.
IRS whistleblowers, you stand vindicated. That’s exactly what you told the House Ways and Means Committee. There are special DOJ rules for the Biden family.
Then Judge Noreika smoked out perhaps the most incredible event at any plea hearing. The defense and the prosecution did not agree on what’s in the deal.
Mr. Wise said the agreement does not preclude DOJ from filing future charges, such as violating FARA, the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
Mr. Clark responded, “As stated by the government just now, I don’t agree with what the government said.”
To which Mr. Wise replied, “Then there is no deal.”
In the end, the judge delayed acceptance. The two sides have weeks to work out a new one. (This is all according to the official court transcript provided by the investigative site Marco Polo.)
The plea agreement acknowledges that Hunter was on the Chinese payroll via an energy conglomerate and private equity fund. This gives the lie to 2020 candidate Biden’s promise to the American people that Hunter never took a dime from China.
President Biden is good at that — looking citizens squarely in the eye and lying to them, without remorse.
• Rowan Scarborough is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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