America's Talking - Hunter Biden Pleads Not Guilty After Plea Deal Falls Apart

Episode Date: July 28, 2023

Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, pleaded not guilty Wednesday to tax-related charges after a highly unusual court hearing where his previously established plea deal fell apart. Biden’s plea deal, which was expected to be finalized Wednesday, was undone in court after last minute disagreements over whether Biden faces further charges in the future for other alleged crimes still under investigation. Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/america-in-focus/support Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greetings and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, executive editor of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me again today is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey, we are recording this on Friday, July 28th. Casey, it's been a bit of a whirlwind week in the case of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's son, in the investigation into tax evasion and other allegations against him. He was expected to plead guilty this week on tax evasion charges, really after. a bizarre plea hearing, he changed his plea to not guilty. What's going on here? Yeah, this is bizarre is the right word, Dan. I mean, this is very unusual. You know, this was supposed to be basically a routine court hearing. They had already worked out the details. We've reported on those details and talked about them, you know, at the center square.com and on this podcast. Weeks ago, right?

I mean, yeah, right. I mean, and that's how these big, especially these high profile cases where someone has a big legal team can afford a really big legal team. I mean, it's going to be drawn out It's going to be very deliberated. By the time you show up in court for something like this, all the ducks should be in a row. But there's a few things that happened that kind of shook it up last minute. This didn't come up in court. But, you know, it's, this seems like there's a really good chance that someone actually impersonated a lawyer on the prosecution side and called the judge and tried to manipulate

what court documents actually the judge had access to, which is a wild, unpersonated, crazy thing. And, you know, we haven't, I don't think we've fully gotten to the bottom of that. but that didn't come up in the court hearing. So that disturbed the piece a little bit, you could say. And then when they showed up, there was really a dispute over whether, you know, Hunter Biden could be charged again for certain crimes like, for example, violating the foreign agents registration act, right? Or whether this plea deal gave him broad immunity.

And the judge kind of pressed on this and said, you know, it was just, it's kind of an unusual deal. There's a lot of things that don't usually happen about it. And there's a line of, you know, you can, if you plead guilty to something, obviously, like, you don't want to be charged again. That's kind of part of the deal is that you agree that, yes, I plead guilty to these things, but, you know, this is all you're going to charge me with and we move on. But there's still investigations ongoing in the Hunter Biden. I mean, honestly, you can't keep track of all the investigations. There's the far as stuff.

There's more related to his father and bribery scheme. You know, it's just kind of an ongoing investigation. Right. Exactly. And so, you know, how can you create a plea deal with him? when he still has these other outstanding things. And if he pleads guilty to this stuff, to what degree does he have immunity or is he protected from potential future charges? And that really is the crux of where things fell apart. They called a recess. They tried to work it out.

And they really couldn't come to an agreement. So they're going to have a future court date. And for now, Hunter Biden has pled not guilty. But he could change that. And I think it's a really a chance he will again strike another plea deal, but, you know, it's definitely an interesting development. Yeah, in advance of this week's plea hearing, Republicans in Congress had urged the judge to reject the deal because of these other allegations against Hunter Biden and his father. This alleged the business dealings that the Biden family had when President Biden was then vice president under President Barack Obama with these foreign entities. And whether or not these foreign entities paid the Bidens for their influence, essentially on overseas,

on foreign affair matters. Is that what this is about? Is that why the judge had concerns about this? What do you know? I know there's a lot that we don't know still, but what do we know about that? Yeah, I mean, there's a few things we know. First, you're right that the Republicans immediately, even before, you know, the latest revelations, they called this a sweetheart deal. They were pretty upset about it. It felt like it was special treatment. And then we found out from the IRS whistleblowers who testified before Congress after this deal was struck, but, you know, before this plea hearing where it all fell apart, we found out that the Department of Justice really interfered, according to these whistleblowers, in the investigation, they slowed it down so that

certain, certain crimes, alleged crimes would be passed the statute of limitations. They interfered with what interviews were allowed and how evidence was collected, which, of course, is huge. So we even know now that that investigation into Hunter Biden in particular on the tax issues was really manipulated by for very possibly for political reasons according to the IRS whistleblower. So that's really a big thing. Second, we know that the FBI released this informant document. Now, it is just a document, you know, it's just one informant who's anonymous. But they laid out a lot of accusations that really tie Hunter Biden and the president to this kind of alleged bribery scheme, in quote unquote bribery scheme that has been, you know, the big question all along.

And so I think the problem Republicans have with this is, hey, wait a minute, we still haven't gotten to the bottom of whether this bribery scheme is real and we have evidence for it. And Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden's lawyers keep talking like, all right, once we accept this plea deal, you can never charge us for anything ever again. And I think they are kind of projecting that and trying to make that true, like will it into existence and get it on the record somehow. But that would be really unusual. I mean, you can't just take a plea deal for a few narrow tax charges and be protected for all crimes in perpetuity. So what's next? Because, I mean, the Department of Justice has been accused of essentially interfering in the Hunter Biden case. Well, there's still the prosecutors here.

So how does anything change from here? Do you have any idea what's next here? How does anything change in Washington, Dan? Or the federal law enforcement, man, that's the question. I mean, this isn't the first time that federal law enforcement in the last few years has been accused of corruption. And, of course, we've talked a lot about the different ways that they've handled different, you know, the way they handled riots, the way they handled January 6th, the way that they've interviewed with, you know, free speech and social media companies. the people they've prosecuted and the way they hunted down January 6 people, but didn't really seem to have the same vigor when it came to the BLM riots around the country.

So, I mean, how do things change? It's something is going to be a next presidential race question. In the short term, I think that there is a real pressure on the Republicans who really want to see something done about this to get the evidence out in the public. I mean, I think they had a big win with that FBI document that Senator Grassley released. because they had to fight tooth and nail to get that document. They threatened to hold the head of the FBI in contempt to, you know, Comer did to try to get that document. And then they released it publicly, even though the FBI was really upset that they did that. So I think that's the short-term strategy for them.

They have to get more evidence because it's, you know, people just assume it's political. And it kind of is partially political, of course. It's the Republicans who want the evidence. So because it's political, because it's a president's son, I think you need more and more evidence. And then the other thing, what's next? Your question is what's next is President Trump is going to keep having his hearings and keep getting drawn closer and closer in his own prosecution and potential ramifications, potential jailing.

I mean, they keep ramping that up. So they're going to have this increasingly difficult juxtaposition of Trump coming under prosecution and Hunter Biden, even as more evidence comes out seemingly not. You said President Trump. Of course, you meant former President Trump, unless you're making it. prediction about the election. Okay, that's good to know. It seems to be that congressional Republicans are the one that's driving this investigation into Hunter Biden and the president. The DOJ seems to be either slow walking or not interested in some of these other allegations.

For example, these bribery allegations. So I just don't know how those two are going to mesh in the future. One last thing, we're almost out of time, Casey. President Biden was asked this week after the plea deal fell apart whether he would pardon his son, Hunter Biden. He didn't really have a response, did he?

No, he kind of just walked away and ignored the question, which has been his response often to these questions about this topic. But the White House press secretary did seem to say that he would not pardon

actually Hunter Biden. So you could always walk that back, but it's interesting that we do have some indication there. ahead of the 24-24 presidential election, I think it would be risky for the president to pardon his son. But who knows after the election is over? He still have a window whether he loses or wins re-election or not to pardon his son. So that's going to be something that's going to be a cloud, I think, over his campaign.

You're right about that. The real question is, if I was your son and I was a, you know, struggling drug addict who had used your name to make money all around the world, would you pardon me? Casey, I play things by the book, whether you're my relative, my old relative. Oh, man. You let me rot away in prison? See you. Oh, my gosh. I'd visit. How to visit.

Wow. How touching. All right, Casey. We're out of time. Thank you for your insight into this story. Listeners can keep up with this story and more at the center square.com for Casey Harper. I'm Dan McKeelope. Be subscribe.

And thank you for listening.