The Journal. - A Dramatic Turn in Hunter Biden’s Plea Deal

Episode Date: July 26, 2023

The Justice Department announced a plea deal with Hunter Biden over two tax charges last month. But a hearing today didn't go as expected. WSJ’s Sadie Gurman on the latest twist in the legal case and what it means for President Biden ahead of next year's election. Further Reading: - Hunter Biden Pleads Not Guilty to Tax Charges  - Where Are Republicans’ Biden Probes Headed, and Is Impeachment Possible?  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Okay, so it's about 6.30 in the morning on Wednesday, and I am driving up to the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Courthouse. Where the hell am I? Our colleague, Sadie Gurman, is in Wilmington, Delaware today. I can see. Oh, yeah, yep. There's a ton of media here. A lot of camera crews, some people in tents, it looks like.

I'm looking for parking here. The media was gathered outside the court today for a high-profile hearing. I'm here very early because it's first-come, first- first serve in the courtroom, where we are going to be watching President Biden's son, Hunter, pleading guilty today to misdemeanor tax offenses. Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden's second son.

For the past five years, Hunter Biden has been the focus of a long Justice Department investigation. At today's hearing, he was expected to plead guilty to two tax charges. The time is now 8.09. There's a lot of reporters lined up here. We're all waiting for Hunter to arrive. And soon the marshals are going to usher us into the courthouse, and we're going to get going to find out if we can fit into the courtroom. So I really got to go. But the day's hearing didn't go exactly as planned.

I have been covering federal court for many, many years, and I have never seen a court hearing quite like this. It was dramatic. for many, many years, and I have never seen a court hearing quite like this. It was dramatic. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Kate Linebaugh. It's Wednesday, July 26th. Coming up on the show, the dramatic turn in Hunter Biden's plea deal. not from you. It's through their Uber Teen account. It's an Uber account that allows your teen to request a ride under your supervision with live trip tracking and highly rated drivers. Add your teen to your Uber account today. Hunter Biden grew up in a political family, but he tried to cut his own path as a lobbyist and a business consultant,

helping foreign companies gain traction in the U.S. And then something happened that brought him center stage. It involved a laptop that he dropped off at a computer repair shop. Eventually, information from that hard drive ended up in the New York Post in October 2020. This laptop has been sort of this cloud over Hunter Biden for years now. It contains a combination of some pretty embarrassing stuff

like homemade pornography, photos of drugs spread out on a table, picture of a gun. But then there's also some emails related to Hunter Biden's business dealings. Some of the content found on the laptop is tied to Hunter Biden's long-running struggle with substance abuse, which he documented in a memoir published in 2021. Here he is narrating the audiobook. I bought crack cocaine on the streets of Washington, D.C. and cooked up my own inside a hotel bungalow in Los Angeles.

I've been so desperate for a drink that I couldn't make the one-block walk between a liquor store and my apartment without uncapping the bottle to take a swig. Also on that laptop were emails related to Hunter's business dealings with a Ukrainian energy company. He served on the company's board and was paid $50,000 a month. This was at a time when his father was vice president and serving as the government's point person on Ukraine. All of this fueled Republican attacks on Hunter Biden. He has some pretty salacious backstory, you know, that he admits to it, all of it, but it doesn't help that it's giving this sort of embarrassing ammunition

for Republicans who are attacking Biden through his son. By the way, whatever happened to Hunter? Where the hell is he? Where's Hunter? And embarrassing is one thing, but like illegal is another. Correct. Okay, so let's talk about this case in Delaware. How did this specific criminal investigation begin? So it started in 2018 when President Trump was in office. It was his Justice Department that opened it. So, it started in 2018 when President Trump was in office.

It was his Justice Department that opened it. We only found out about the investigation a couple of years later in December 2020. What happened? Well, Hunter Biden admitted in a statement that he was under investigation, and this was only about a month after his dad had been elected as president. So, he created a situation in which the president-elect's son was under federal investigation just as his dad was about to take office. Okay, so let's talk about this criminal case. What are the charges at the heart of this case?

So what this ultimately boiled down to is a pair of misdemeanor tax offenses alleging Hunter Biden failed to pay his taxes. Hunter Biden received more than $1.5 million in annual income in 2017 and 2018 and didn't pay taxes on it, despite owing more than $100,000 each year. Hunter Biden has since paid a million dollars in back taxes and fines. And aside from the two misdemeanors, there was also a weapons charge. And aside from the two misdemeanors, there was also a weapons charge. For basically lying on a form that you need to purchase a gun, saying that he was not a drug user at this time.

It's illegal to own a gun as a drug user, and prosecutors are saying he lied and owned a gun. So this five-year investigation boiled down to some very pretty cut-and-dry charges. What took so long? Well, that's one of the biggest questions in this investigation that interests me. It's unclear why. What we know is that a group of IRS employees who call themselves whistleblowers

have come forward to allege that Justice Department officials slow-walked and stymied the investigation. Two IRS employees assigned to the case recently testified to Congress. They detailed what they viewed as irregularities, things like delayed warrants and instructions to investigators to avoid certain topics. They also said that the Justice Department was hampering David Weiss, the Trump-appointed lead prosecutor assigned to the case. Weiss has denied these claims and said he had, quote, ultimate authority over the case. And last month, Weiss announced a

plea deal. Hunter Biden would plead guilty to the two tax charges, and in exchange, prosecutors wouldn't pursue the felony gun charge as long as he stayed drug-free for two years and never owns a firearm again. But this deal drew a lot of fire. So Republicans have decried the plea deal as a sweetheart deal. They said he's being given lenient treatment because he's the president's son. said he's being given lenient treatment because he's the president's son. And recently they questioned FBI Director Christopher Wray on the Hill and asked Matt Gaetz, the Republican from Florida, asked whether the FBI director was protecting the Bidens.

Are you protecting the Bidens? Absolutely not. The FBI does not and has no interest in protecting anyone politically. You won't answer the question about whether or not that's a shakedown, and everybody knows why you won't answer. The question about whether or not that's a shakedown, and everybody knows why you won't answer. Despite all that, today's court appearance was expected to proceed with Hunter entering a guilty plea. Until it didn't.

Well, the time is now 11.46 a.m. I have just a few minutes to fill you in, but in a stunning turn of events, it appears as though Biden's plea deal is in jeopardy. So just wanted to give you that quick update. Talk to you soon. What happened next is after a cocktail. It has to be mixed just right. Start with a handful of great friends. Now add your favorite music. And then, finally, add Bacardi Rum.

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Our next update from Sadie at the courthouse came at 1.37. Sadie described how events unfolded inside the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Mary Ellen Norica. Okay, it has been a day of quite a bit of whiplash here in federal court in Delaware. What has just happened? It was dramatic. It was very testy. The judge asked probing questions of both sides. At some points, at least twice, we had to take a recess so that the parties could fight it out behind the scenes. So what happened at first was that prosecutors and defense attorneys

disagreed over whether the terms of the plea agreement provided Hunter Biden with protection from prosecution for certain offenses. So they disagreed over the scope of the immunity that the deal would give him. At one point, the defense attorney, Chris Clark, could be overheard in a, like, they basically broke. And then Chris Clark, the defense attorney, could be heard telling the prosecutor, okay, well, then let's just rip it up, let's rip it up. And the judge called the courtroom back to order,

and basically it appeared as though the deal was over. The prosecutor said, okay, well, then the deal is off. And then the defense attorney was like, well, let's just take 10 minutes and see if we can come to a meeting of the minds on this. So they did. And then about 15 minutes later, they came back into the courtroom. It looked like they had struck a truce. Hunter Biden appeared ready to plead guilty. And the judge just said, well, look, I just have a ton of questions here. And I don't you know, I'm not sure that this is even constitutional. I'm not sure that you've brought these plea agreements under the proper statutes. I need more time and you need to give me more information about how you came to

these arrangements and why you think they're acceptable. And it's been quite an experience here. A lot of whiplash, a lot of, you know, physical pain at times sitting in the courtroom, waiting, thinking you knew one thing was going to happen when something else totally happened. So, like I said, this is a first for me. The judge's questions about the nature of the plea deal caused the day's events to take an even more unexpected turn. caused the day's events to take an even more unexpected turn. The hearing has just adjourned. Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty in a stunning reversal after the judge refused to sign off on his plea agreement that he had arranged with prosecutors,

saying she needed more information and time to consider whether what she described as atypical provisions were appropriate and constitutional. So we don't have any resolution to this right now. This basically ensures that Hunter Biden's legal issues remain swirling around his father as he campaigns for reelection. This is far from resolved. If anything, there are only more questions now about how these agreements were arranged, how the decisions were made by both the Justice Department and the defense team, and what went on behind the scenes.

So if anything, I am leaving this courthouse with more questions than I have answers and a very striking turn of events. I just I'm still trying to wrap my head around it. Hunter Biden left the court without making a statement. On Wednesday afternoon, the White House press secretary called the case a personal matter for a private citizen and said the president and first lady, quote, love their son and will continue to support him as he rebuilds his life. The lack of a clear resolution to the case could fuel more attacks on the Bidens. Republicans in Congress are already probing Hunter Biden's business dealings to determine if President Biden was involved. They have accused the president of helping his son close

business deals with foreign companies, accusations that the White House says are false. What no one disputes is that Hunter Biden did try to cash in on his family's name. And is influence peddling like this illegal? Strictly speaking, no, it's not illegal. It's kind of shady and it's not becoming of a president's son, but it's not necessarily illegal. And through these congressional hearings, Republican lawmakers are trying to determine the extent to which President Biden was involved in his son's business dealings. That's right. So far, have they found any evidence to support that allegation?

No, they haven't. But they've continued to use the information to try to suggest that there's something more there and that they're going to get to the bottom of it. Nevertheless, having these hearings going on is politically challenging for President Biden. Right. It certainly keeps this issue at the forefront just as President Biden's reelection campaign is taking off. It's something that the White House has been having to address almost daily. And I think that Republicans will be digging deep. They even threatened to pursue an impeachment case against President Biden, citing his financial ties to overseas businesses and the Justice Department's handling of his son's criminal case. I don't think we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in this story anytime soon.

I think we'll be hearing about it frequently. That's all for today, Wednesday, July 26th. The Journal is a co-production of Gimlet and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Aruna Vishwanathan. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.