Whistleblower(s) from IRS sworn testimony on Biden Investigation

[Dill]

(07-27-2023, 12:24 PM)GMDino Wrote: 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.

That seems to clarify the RWM muddle I saw yesterday.