Protecting the Bidens

National Review Online

Friday, July 28, 2023

 

It’s hard to believe, but the Hunter Biden plea agreement turns out to be even worse than advertised.

 

It blew up in court on Wednesday under questioning by Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was understandably mystified by its bizarre structure and opaque provisions.

 

Ordinarily, the provisions of a plea agreement are in the four corners of the plea agreement. Ordinarily, they are quite standard. Ordinarily, they are set out in crystal-clear terms. Ordinarily, they don’t undercut what is supposed to be an investigation into more serious matters. But everything about this was different because, ordinarily, the Department of Justice isn’t acting to protect the president of the United States from a politically sensitive investigation into his son’s corrupt business dealings.

 

DOJ tucked provisions giving Hunter Biden sweeping immunity from future prosecution in a so-called diversion agreement related to his gun offense. To review, Biden is pleading guilty to two minor tax charges arising from the cascade of sleazy foreign money that poured into his accounts and was distributed to other family members. He isn’t pleading guilty to the gun charge, instead simply agreeing to a couple of years of probation to get off the hook. Any immunity term should have been in the plea deal but instead was in the diversion agreement, where it wouldn’t be expected.

 

Since plea deals are usually above board, judges typically approve them without any fuss (the diversion agreement doesn’t need a judge’s approval). Clearly, DOJ was hoping that’d happen here and everyone could go home happy — Hunter would have gotten his immunity, and DOJ would have granted it without anyone noticing, all the while pretending to still be seriously investigating his influence-peddling.

 

The scheme fell apart when Judge Noreika began asking questions and DOJ couldn’t admit what it’d agreed to and Hunter Biden’s lawyers insisted on the original indefensible immunity term. After some complicated back-and-forth, the judge refused to approve the plea agreement.

 

In the normal course of things, there’d be an underlying indictment, but the DOJ never filed one. From its perspective, it is likely that there were two problems with an indictment. One, the indictment would involve setting out a damning set of facts embarrassing to the president. Two, it would freeze the clock on the statute of limitations for any other criminal offenses related to Hunter Biden’s foreign “work,” preventing DOJ from simply running out the clock.

 

If the IRS whistleblowers presented a shocking portrait of a DOJ doing everything possible to protect Hunter Biden and his father, the sham plea agreement suggests that they didn’t know the half of it.

 

Meanwhile, more evidence is emerging that Joe Biden was directly involved in Hunter’s business dealings, with a credible FBI source telling the agency that the head of Burisma characterized his lavish payments as bribes.

 

What should happen now? In a more normal world, a scrupulous prosecutor would be handling the case and have the time to conduct a thoroughgoing investigation. In the world we’re living in, the immediate problem is that the conflicted Biden DOJ has already lost potential criminal counts to the statute of limitations and stands to lose more the longer things drag out.

 

The best we can hope for, then, is that DOJ feels compelled to immediately file an indictment charging all provable tax and gun charges — meaning felonies, as well as any misdemeanors. This would end the statute-of-limitations problem (at least regarding those charges). It would not prevent DOJ from negotiating a new plea agreement with Hunter Biden, but it would be a valuable public marker for what an appropriate plea agreement should look like.

 

Meantime, the House must press ahead with its broader investigation of the Biden family influence-peddling business. That probe has the best chance of yielding valuable information and imposing some accountability. Congress should continue aggressively demanding answers and documents from DOJ, FBI, and IRS, and should be prepared to take action against recalcitrant officials.

 

The Washington cliché is that it’s the cover-up, not the crime. In this case, it might be both.