OAN’s Daniel Baldwin
8:48 AM – Thursday, July 27, 2023
Hunter Biden’s plea deal unraveled Wednesday after a contentious federal court hearing. U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika adjourned the hearing so the Department of Justice and Hunter Biden’s legal team could rework the deal to her liking.
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“[Judge Noreika] had a lot of courage, because neither side wanted her to make that decision,” criminal defense attorney, Alan Dershowitz, said. “And she made the decision, because she doesn’t represent either side. She’s not the government’s lawyer, and she’s not the defense lawyer. She’s our lawyer. She’s the judge for the public. And the public interest mandated that she not accept this plea.”
Hunter Biden planned to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges, and avoid punishment on a felony gun charge through a pretrial diversion agreement. However, prosecutors and Biden’s attorneys disagreed about the scope of immunity that the deal offered. Noreika then expressed concerns about her own role in the deal. Dershowitz says there was too much confusion for a judge to feel comfortable accepting the agreement.
“We have Attorney General Garland saying [U.S. attorney David Weiss] was open to investigate anything from Los Angeles, District of Columbia, Ukraine, China,” Dershowitz said. “The U.S. attorney himself, David Weiss, says, ‘No, no, no, no, I was limited only to Delaware.’ Well, somebody is not conveying the right information to the court.”
“And then of course, there’s the ambiguity,” Dershowitz continued. “Can he be continually investigated? And what if other crimes are found? Does this close the book as his lawyer said it does, or does it, uh, maintain the possibility of more investigation as the U.S. attorney’s office said it was.”
Dershowitz says this ambiguity is disrespectful to the American public.
“That is not the kind of transparency that the Constitution requires and that the American public rightfully demands,” Dershowitz told One America News.
The First Son ended up pleading not guilty to all three charges. Hunter Biden could withdraw that plea if Noreika approves a deal down the road.
“Will [Judge Noreika] accept a resolution that both sides agree to, even if there are no ambiguities,” Dershowitz questioned. “But if she’s not satisfied that there was an investigation that covered all possible crimes outside of Delaware, I think that’s the remaining issue.”
Republican lawmakers celebrated Noreika’s decision. House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer saying that she did the “right thing by refusing to rubberstamp Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal.”
Dershowitz argued that the deal was fair if the extent of the deal focused on the tax and gun charges exclusively.
“It was not a sweetheart deal if all he was guilty of was the tax evasion, he paid the taxes back, and the gun charge,” Dershowtiz said. “If those were the only crimes, then the appropriate resolution was putting him in a program, allowing him to plead.”
Dershowitz says if the deal did include broad global immunity, something that Hunter Biden’s legal team reportedly wanted, then it would have been a sweetheart deal.
“But if there’s more, whether or not there was extortion, whether or not there was improper conduct with Ukraine, whether there were improper dealings with China, then clearly it was a sweetheart deal,” Dershowitz argued. “So I’ll put it this way, the sweetheart part of the deal was to end the investigation, but the prosecution said we didn’t agree to that.”
Reports say the prosecution admitted on the record that the investigation into Hunter Biden was ongoing. This could be significant since Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley released an FD-1023 form alleging Burisma Oil executive Mykola Zlochevksy paid both Hunter and then-Vice President Joe Biden $5 million each to shut down an investigation by then-Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“The allegations are damning if truthful,” Dershowitz said. “But remember that whistleblowers are not necessarily truth tellers. Just because you’re a whistleblower doesn’t mean you’re telling the truth.”
Dershowitz asserted the American people deserved to know the truth about the confidential human source’s claims in the FD-1023.
“We can’t allow these kinds of allegations, which are so serious, to lay out there unproven,” Dershowitz said. “So that the Republicans can say we believe it. And the Democrats can say, we don’t. We have to have a process by which we decide whether and what is truthful and what is not truthful.”
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