Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal is “withdrawn” and invalid, special counsel David Weiss said in a Tuesday court filing.
Lawyers for the president’s son argued on Sunday that terms of the “diversion agreement” within their failed plea deal remained intact. The diversion agreement gave Hunter Biden immunity from potential future charges.
The lawyers also tried to force Weiss into a corner to abide by the irregular deal, claiming the government “reneged” on a “previously agreed-upon Plea Agreement.”
Prosecutors pushed back on those claims.
“First, the Government did not ‘renege’ on the ‘previously agreed-upon Plea Agreement,’ as the Defendant inaccurately asserts in the first substantive sentence of his response,” prosecutors wrote. “The Defendant chose to plead not guilty at the hearing on July 26, 2023, and U.S. Probation declined to approve the proposed diversion agreement at that hearing. Thus, neither proposed agreement entered into effect.”
“In sum, because Ms. Bray, acting in her capacity as the Chief United States Probation Officer, did not approve the now-withdrawn diversion agreement, it never went into effect and, therefore, none of its terms are binding on either party,” prosecutors wrote:
The Government’s statement that the Agreement goes into effect if the Court signs it is a recognition that the signature of Margaret M. Bray, Chief United States Probation Officer for the District of Delaware, was necessary to put the agreement into effect, and that Ms. Bray is the head of an office within the Court and would be acting at the Court’s direction as was made clear at the hearing when Ms. Bray declined to sign and approve the agreement.
The original plea deal broke down upon scrutiny from the judge. Prosecutors now expect the case to go to trial and it will likely be tried in Delaware or California.
The agreement originally afforded Hunter Biden the ability to plead guilty for not paying taxes on over $1.5 million in income in 2017 and 2018, receiving probation rather than jail time. In addition, Weiss devised a separate diversion agreement that gave Hunter Biden immunity from potential future charges, including a provision to essentially wipe a felony gun violation from his record.
Tristan Leavitt, president of Empower Oversight, said Hunter Biden’s lawyers are working to make it difficult for President Joe Biden’s Justice Department to retain credibility after it offered and then pulled a sweetheart plea deal from their client.
“The more that comes out, the worse this is all going to look for Weiss and his office,” he posted on Twitter.
“[They] will likely expose how all of this came about after/because of the IRS whistleblowers coming forward,” he added. “That is not a pretty timetable for them—it shows how clearly reactive they were in attempts to CYA (cover your ass).”
Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.
