Whistleblower(s) from IRS sworn testimony on Biden Investigation

[GMDino]

(07-27-2023, 12:12 PM)Luvnit2 Wrote: I understand he did a plea of not guilty of the tax charges. My question is why wasn't he arrested and then arraigned. 

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Quote:[url=https://substack.com/app-link/post?publication_id=86716&post_id=135478208&utm_source=post-email-title&isFreemail=true&token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjoxMjEzMzg2NjIsInBvc3RfaWQiOjEzNTQ3ODIwOCwiaWF0IjoxNjkwNDA1NDk0LCJleHAiOjE2OTI5OTc0OTQsImlzcyI6InB1Yi04NjcxNiIsInN1YiI6InBvc3QtcmVhY3Rpb24ifQ.wWp_G-kfQQrgyPMgeiH79H-_-QG9x5_6IK0a_HqGnuc]Hunter Biden And The Fog Of War
What We Don’t Know About Why The Hunter Biden Plea Deal Blew Up
KEN WHITE
JUL 26

 





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The urge to comment on events immediately, as they are happening, before we have the information necessary to evaluate them, is corrosive. It’s also overpowering and pervasive in the era of social media. Nobody wants to wait for tomorrow’s morning paper, or even tonight’s newscast. We want answers and we want them now. Many of us also want to be the ones providing those answers — the first ones providing those answers — for those sweet clicks, comments, likes, and attention. Accuracy and nuance are the casualties.


Today Robert Hunter Biden’s long-anticipated guilty plea on two misdemeanor counts of failure to file a tax return was derailed. You’ve seen the news by now, and if you haven’t, you’ve probably seen the social media reactions, many of which are nonsensical and uninformed.


The truth is, so far, elusive. There were reporters in the courtroom. But, judging from the news stories, and with the greatest respect to those reporters, it seems they didn’t completely understand what was happening. They couldn’t report many verbatim quotes (they should have brought someone who takes shorthand) and federal courts don’t allow broadcast or media recoding of proceedings. So we’re left with a series of impressions by reporters who picked up bits and pieces of what was happening. Many of those reporters are intelligent and sophisticated but it’s not clear they have the experience with federal criminal law to pick up exactly what was going on.


The truth further eludes us because we lack the most important document — the written plea agreement between the U.S. Attorney’s Office. Always read the plea agreement to understand a plea. I argued weeks ago, when news of the plea deal came out, that until we got the plea agreement we could not fully evaluate the many claims that Hunter Biden was getting a “sweetheart deal.” In many federal districts it would be filed as a matter of course before the plea hearing, the government said in an earlier filing that it would be filed, and it still hasn’t been filed, leaving crucial questions unanswered and making it very difficult to interpret today’s events.


Here’s what we know, and what we still need to know.


We know that Hunter Biden showed up in court to enter his guilty plea. A federal guilty plea is an involved process; it’s routine for it to last anywhere from fifteen minutes (very fast) to an hour (slow). It involves a searching inquiry by the judge into whether the defendant understands the terms of the deal, the rights they are giving up, the sentence and sentencing process they are facing, the facts supporting the plea, and the voluntariness of the deal. Today that process went sideways, as it sometimes does.


From press reports, it appears that U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked questions about the scope of the deal. Specifically, she asked whether the government was agreeing not to prosecute Hunter Biden further just on these tax issues, or on any other issues it was investigating, including the Foreign Agent Registration Act. The government responded that the deal only precluded the government from prosecuting any other tax crimes related to these facts; Hunter Biden’s lawyers said that was wrong and if that was the case there was no deal. The judge told them to go talk and work it out. Apparently they did - and Hunter Biden agreed with the government that he was only protected from further tax prosecution on these facts, not from other prosecutions based on other investigations — but the judge asked the parties to submit briefs clarifying the scope of the non-prosecution promise and to come back, and did not accept the plea.


This is strange, and we can’t interpret the extent of the strangeness because we don’t have the written plea agreement.


Federal plea agreements typically spell out, very explicitly, the government’s non-prosecution promises. A standard agreement will say that the government agrees that this specific U.S. Attorney’s Office will not prosecute the defendant further for the facts and circumstances described in the plea agreement, but that the deal doesn’t cover any other crimes and doesn’t bind any other office or entity. That’s very narrow. It’s also very explicit and not subject to easy misunderstanding.

So for things to go wrong here, one of the following had to happen:

• The government didn’t define the scope of its promise of non-prosecution in the agreement. That would be a huge mistake and very unusual.
• The government defined the scope of its non-prosecution promise in the plea agreement but the scope was vague or badly drafted. That’s unusual and also a mistake. They are normally extremely careful with this language. The fact that the judge saw fit to inquire about the scope of the deal makes this possibility plausible — if the plea agreement was as clear on this point as it should be, and the judge read it, the judge wouldn’t have to ask that question.
• Hunter Biden’s lawyers didn’t read the plea agreement carefully or didn’t understand the non-prosecution promise. Hunter Biden has experienced attorneys and that would be a huge and embarrassing blunder.
  

If I could read the plea agreement I could tell you which of these scenarios happened. But they haven’t filed the agreement and haven’t made it public, so we’re left to speculate.


The judge’s refusal to accept the deal for now was appropriate. If there’s no meeting of the minds — if the parties don’t agree on the terms of the deal — the judge shouldn’t accept the plea. Also, once uncertainty has been expressed on the record, it’s not that strange for the judge to say “go put it in writing and come back” rather than accepting their statement “ok we straightened it out now.” Federal judges are notoriously careful about the guilty plea colloquy. I would probably do the same about such a high-profile case — if there was any hint that a party thought the written plea agreement was ambiguous, I would want it fixed.


What this does not seem to suggest, at least based on the information we have, is that the judge has accepted GOP arguments that Hunter Biden is getting a sweetheart deal, or that she’s part of a GOP conspiracy, or that she’s ultimately going to tank the deal.


We may have to wait until the parties file the clarification requested by the judge. One would hope they’d file the plea agreement — amended or not — by then. That will answer questions about this hiccup (and, I think, make it easier to evaluate the “sweetheart deal” arguments).

For now, the only thing I am confident in saying is that somebody done ****** up. But I’m not sure who.

https://popehat.substack.com/p/hunter-biden-and-the-fog-of-war?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=86716&post_id=135478208&isFreemail=true&utm_medium=email

We don't have the pleas deal, no recording of what went on in court is available so all we have are handwritten notes from reporters and what they say they heard.

It would seem a deal was reached but the judge wants it in writing so they can review it.