Federal District Judge Maryellen Noreika pulled the rug out from under one of the most corrupt plea bargains in American history – a least temporarily. She postponed final judgment after requesting both sides to provide more arguments. Though it is only a postponement, it tends to indicate that the plea deal on the tax charges offered by the prosecutors will have to be changed or dropped – and that is bad news for Biden.
There is also a question of the deal over the gun charges as to whether the Court has the authority to reject it since it is not based on Biden pleading guilty. In a sense, they are using a unique strategy to not carry forward on the gun charge.
I shall try to explain. Read on.
If you watch the left-leaning media, you will have heard one reporter, anchor and panelist after another claim that the plea deals federal prosecutors offered Hunter Biden was just what any average person would have gotten. In fact, MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell proffered the argument that Hunter was offered a tougher deal than most with similar charges. (You can always count on O’Donnell to carry the propaganda to the ridiculous extreme.)
None of those analyses are remotely true. In what must have been shocking to the “Morning Joe” personalities was the detailed explanation legal analyst Danny Cevallos provided to viewers. He called the deal amazingly good for Biden– virtually unprecedented in a federal court. He said it was a “gift from heaven.” Actually, it was a “gift” from overly friendly or biased prosecutors in the Biden stronghold of Delaware … period.
Not only was it a good deal for Hunter, Cevallos said he could not think of any other example– as in never – in which a federal gun case of this sort was subject to such a plea deal.
Officially known as “pre-trial diversion,” Cevallos said that it essentially is a not guilty verdict. This is not like a normal plea deal in which the defendant gets a lesser sentence for a guilty plea. No. No. No. This means no guilty plea at all on the more serious gun charge.
After two years of good behavior the record would have been expunged as if Biden was never guilty of the gun charge. Think about that. Hunter pleads guilty to tax evasion and gets a pre-trial diversion on the gun charge — and will get off scott free. Not even a criminal record. To the best of Cevallos’ knowledge, no other person has ever gotten a pre-trial diversion in such a gun case … EVER.
Cevallos said that if the federal courts are going to start handing out pre-trial diversions, he will be the first attorney to raise his hand. The deal Biden got is not only a good deal, but also unprecedented.
There are two aspects of the case – the tax evasion charges and the gun charges. The latter is the more serious issue.
The tax evasion charge was a misdemeanor. Biden agreed to plead guilty to evading $200,000 in taxes in his 2017 and 2018 filing. Actually, they billed it as a “late payment.” Uh huh. He pays the past taxes and penalties and that is it. No fines. No jail time. (You have to have made a lot of money in those two years to evade $200,000 in taxes over and above what he may have paid. I mention that because you will recall Biden pleaded in his love child case that he did not have the money to pay a few thousand dollars a month in child support. But I digress.)
The gun case was a serious felony that would not – and should not — have been subject of a pre-trial diversion. A guilty verdict could potentially put Biden in the slammer for ten years – although that is very unlikely. But some jail time for sure. Essentially, the feds charged Biden with the illegal acquisition and possession of a gun by a drug user. According to Cevallos, that charge should not have been closed with a sweetheart deal – especially a pre-trial diversion.
Cevallos pointed out that to press the charge, prosecutors would have to prove that Biden possessed a gun illegally as a habitual drug user. That could be hard to prove in many cases, but Biden has all the evidence on the public record – from videos to his admissions in his book. The prosecutors offered the unprecedented sweetheart deal in the face of a virtually slam-dunk case. There can be only one reason these prosecutors would do that – and we all know the reason. In fact, the entire prosecutorial decision in Delaware appears to have been influenced by the presence of close Biden friends in the office of the U.S. Attorney.
In pre-trial diversion, Biden would not have had to plead guilty to the gun charges. He gets a $10,000 court cost fine and if he is a good boy for two years, the charges are dropped and expunged as if they never happened. Cevallos could not believe that federal prosecutors would offer such an unprecedented sweetheart deal.
Instead of “the deal,” Biden had to plead not guilty in court because the judge refused to accept the deal as presented. Normally, this would mean a trial. But that is up to the prosecutors. They could drop the charges or run the case past the statute-of-limitation in October. Hunter may yet wiggle of the hook, but not as easily as it was before Judge Noreika essentially called the plea deal for what it was – what Cevallos called a “gift from heaven.”
This is not only a story about political bias in the prosecutorial ranks, but of a corrupt media that proffered a completely phony, untrue propaganda analysis of the case for political reasons. This is not the first time we have seen this combination of questionable law enforcement and dishonest reporting – and sadly will not likely be the last.
So, there ‘tis.