Hunter's Lawyers Threatening 'Spectacle' of Joe Biden on Witness Stand a Key Part of Biden-DOJ 'Sweetheart' Deal Talks
When it came to getting a plea deal for their client, Hunter Biden’s lawyers were ready to pull the biggest card they had.
In the wake of the implosion of a “sweetheart deal” Hunter Biden’s lawyers negotiated with the Joe Biden Justice Department, details are surfacing that show one tactic Hunter’s lawyers had at the ready to get their client out of his legal troubles with as little pain as possible.
And, according to a lengthy report published in Politico on Saturday, it did the trick — until a federal judge got to curious about the details.
According to a Politico report published Saturday, Hunter Biden attorney Chris Clark, who has now asked to withdraw from the case, explicitly warned Justice Department prosecutors that if they could not reach a deal, the president himself would be called to testify in his son’s defense.
“President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial,” Clark wrote in a 32-page letter sent on Halloween, according to the Beltway news outlet.
According to the report, Clark was pushed in particular by two leaks regarding the Justice Department’s treatment of Hunter Biden that would warrant calling the president to the stand.
Earlier in October, The Washington Post had published a report citing what the paper described as federal agents saying there was evidence to bring charges against Hunter Biden for failure to pay income taxes and for lying on a form to buy a gun.
That was followed within days by another leak — this one published by the U.K. Daily Mail, which maintains a robust digital presence in the U.S.
It reported a voicemail from October 2018, in which then-former Vice President Joe Biden pleaded with Hunter to get help for his drug addiction — the same drug addiction Hunter had denied on a federal form he filled out to buy a gun.
According to Politico, Clark saw the leaks as part of an orchestrated campaign to pressure the Justice Department to bring charges against his client.
The tax charges would not even be on the table if it weren’t for political pressure from former President Donald Trump, Biden’s legal team argued, according to Politico.
And in an example of how the world inside the Beltway can look almost exactly upside down from the way it looks on the outside, according to Politico, Clark wrote in his letter that, “federal law enforcement officials had known about Biden’s gun episode since 2018. Only politics explained why years later they were considering charges, he argued.”
Biden critics, like the Republicans on the House Oversight Committee, not to mention defense lawyers who’ve represented clients charged in similar cases, as Hunter Biden’s suspected offense — lying on a federal form to buy a gun — would say exactly the opposite.
That’s when, in the letter, that Clark threatened to call Joe Biden as a witness, and offered the following sentence that tacitly urged Justice Department prosecutors not to make him do that, according to Politico.
“This of all cases justifies neither the spectacle of a sitting President testifying at a criminal trial nor the potential for a resulting Constitutional crisis,” Clark wrote.
According to the Politico report, months intervened between the time Clark wrote that letter and when the two sides finally hammered out an agreement.
But there’s no doubt the prospect of a sitting president being called as a witness in his own son’s criminal trials weighed on the Department of Justice — and very possibly those working for a Biden re-election,.
The plea agreement that was eventually agreed was so favorable to Hunter Biden, and so unusual, that it couldn’t stand up in court when it was questioned by Judge Maryellen Noreika.
It has been attacked by congressional Republicans and conservative commentators like former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy.
But from a lawyer’s point of view, Hunter’s legal team did its job — and was willing to play the biggest card it had.
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