It included two years of probation in exchange for Biden pleading guilty to tax evasion, and pre-trial diversion for the weapons charges.īut Noreika said at a 27 July plea hearing she was concerned about her role in enforcing the terms of the agreement.
Weiss led a five-year investigation into Biden before being named special counsel, and presented a plea deal to end the case to the US district judge Maryellen Noreika, another Trump appointee, in July. The White House, in keeping with its longtime stance, referred reporters’ questions to the Department of Justice, and Hunter Biden’s private lawyers. “The best I can tell, they want to impeach me because they want to shut down the government,” Joe Biden said on Wednesday.īiden’s supporters have also criticized what they see as a heavy-handed political prosecution of a person with no previous criminal record.īiden’s lawyers said last month they expected that felony gun charges would be dropped in exchange for him abiding by the terms of a diversion agreement, which they considered separate to the tax issues and therefore still valid. Previously, the Kentucky congressman said the failed plea agreement, which would have allowed Biden to avoid prison time, was “a sweetheart deal that belongs in the trash”.ĭemocrats, meanwhile, insist the impeachment inquiry is a distraction by McCarthy to appease hardliners in his party amid a fight over government funding.
James Comer, the Republican chair of the House oversight committee, reportedly called the development “a small start”, according to CNN. The decision affects only Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, but Biden’s lawyers could choose to test it in Delaware. Lowell was referring to the striking down by a federal appeals court in New Orleans last month of a law denying weapons to sober citizens based on past drug usage. “Hunter Biden possessing an unloaded gun for 11 days was not a threat to public safety, but a prosecutor, with all the power imaginable, bending to political pressure, presents a grave threat to our system of justice.” “The evidence in this matter has not changed in the last six weeks, but the law has, and so has Maga Republicans’ improper and partisan interference in this process. “As expected, prosecutors filed charges today that they deemed were not warranted just six weeks ago following a five-year investigation into this case,” he said in a statement. Three House committees will be seeking bank papers and other documents attempting to prove thus far unsubstantiated claims the president illegally profited from the business relationship with his son.Ībbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, condemned the indictment as politically motivated. It also has significant political implications following the announcement on Tuesday by House speaker Kevin McCarthy that Republicans were to pursue an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden for business dealings involving his son. He faces up to 10 years in prison on each of two counts of making false statements to a Delaware gun dealer who sold him the gun, and five for possessing it as someone with drug addiction. This is the first time the son of a sitting US president has been indicted on federal criminal charges. The surprise indictment filed on Thursday was brought by Weiss, a Donald Trump appointee as US attorney for Delaware, who was named by the attorney general, Merrick Garland, as a special counsel last month after the collapse of the plea deal that included two misdemeanor tax charges.
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