The New York Times and Politico published a pair of lengthy stories detailing the collapse of Hunter Biden's plea deal over the weekend, and they're packed with extraordinary details. It seems likely that members of the president's son's legal team acted as sources for both pieces -- which offer a series of jaw-dropping claims about what was happening behind the scenes before the wrist-slap agreement disintegrated in open court, as the result of a simple question from the presiding judge. Early in the Times story, I had to re-read this sentence: "The deal’s collapse — chronicled in over 200 pages of confidential correspondence between Mr. Weiss’s office and Mr. Biden’s legal team, and interviews with those close to Mr. Biden, lawyers involved in the case and Justice Department officials — came after intense negotiations that started with the prospect that Mr. Biden would not be charged at all and now could end in his possible indictment and trial."
The prospect that Hunter Biden "would not be charged at all"? Excuse me? Indeed, according to the Times, the so-called 'prosecutor' in this case -- and I use scare quotes because David Weiss does not appear to have demonstrated any appetite for actually prosecuting this case in a meaningful way -- was inclined to let the president's son skate entirely. But then the IRS whistleblowers came forward, and the political calculus changed:
Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses. Now, the I.R.S. agents and their Republican allies say they believe the evidence they brought forward, at the precise time they did, played a role in influencing the outcome, a claim senior law enforcement officials dispute.
Communications records indicate Weiss was preparing to close his years-long investigation, during which he'd inexplicably allowed statues of limitations to expire on what people familiar with the probe say were clear-cut felonies, to end without so much as a single guilty plea from Hunter Biden. On anything. He would have faced no justice on his tax evasion crimes, or the open-and-shut gun felony, or any possible FARA violations and other illegal activity that may have arisen over the course of the process. A total walk. Only when IRS agents blew the whistle on how the investigation was being handled, alleging special treatment and improper interference, did Weiss "suddenly" decide that some sort of guilty plea would be required. This strongly points to a thoroughly and unacceptably politicized process. Politico is hearing the same thing:
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BREAKING: The ORIGINAL proposed deal for Hunter Biden, drafted by prosecutor David Weiss's deputy Lesley Wolf, did not require Hunter to plead guilty to ANYTHING and was changed WITHIN DAYS of IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley going public with favoritism charges, Politico reporting
— Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) August 20, 2023
[Hunter's lawyer] issued a warning: If the Justice Department charged the president’s son, his lawyers would put the president on the witness stand...“President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial,” Clark wrote in a 32-page letter reviewed by POLITICO. That letter, along with more than 300 pages of previously unreported emails and documents exchanged between Hunter Biden’s legal team and prosecutors, sheds new light on the fraught negotiations that nearly produced a broad plea deal. That deal would have resolved Biden’s most pressing legal issues — the gun purchase and his failure to pay taxes for several years — and it also could have helped insulate Biden from future prosecution by a Republican-led Justice Department.
Hunter's lead lawyer threatened to pull Joe Biden into the case, an obvious, politically-charged warning. If you read the story, he also invoked Donald Trump constantly, admonishing Weiss and DOJ that they'd ruin their reputations if they acquiesced to Trump's ranting about the president's son. This was politicized to the core, and it almost worked. As for all the assurances from Merck Garland et al that Weiss had 'full authority' over this case (Weiss had complained to subordinates late last year that he didn't have full authority), this fact pattern paints a different picture:
From the fall of 2022 through the spring of 2023, Clark sought meetings with people at the highest levels of the Justice Department — almost entirely without success...The search ended when Clark sent Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer an exasperated email, saying he had asked the government over and over to tell him who at headquarters they could appeal to if Weiss decided to charge their client. “To date we have heard nothing in this regard,” he added. “Please advise whether you would be the appropriate person to hear our client’s appeal, in the event that the U.S. Attorney’s Office decides to charge Mr. Biden,” he wrote. Weinsheimer was indeed the right guy, and he met with Clark and Weiss on April 26. It’s not clear what happened in the meeting, which came at a sensitive moment for the probe...On May 18, another lawyer for Biden sent two Delaware prosecutors — including Lesley Wolf, a senior prosecutor in the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office — the first draft of a proposed deal, structured so it wouldn’t need a judge’s sign-off and wouldn’t require a guilty plea from Biden...Weiss’ team of prosecutors seemed pleased...Pleading guilty was not on Wolf’s list of must-haves.
Clark, representing Hunter, secured a meeting with a 'Main Justice' higher-up, and within a few weeks, an unbelievably lax plea deal was hatched, not even requiring any guilty pleas from the president's son. The same day that the sweetheart agreement was proposed by Wolf (May 15), "it was reported that the investigative team that had worked on the case, including Mr. Shapley, had been removed," according to the Times. The same day. What timing. But then the IRS whistleblowers went public, including Gary Shapley sitting down for a CBS News interview. "Within days of the interview airing, Justice Department prosecutors made clear to Biden’s lawyers that the deal would have to change and that Biden would need to plead guilty to tax charges," Politico reports.
Per the Times, "senior law enforcement officials dispute" the claim that the whistleblowers forced Weiss' hand, but what's the basis for that dispute? The timing is what it is, and the correspondence reviewed by both publications aligns with the Occam's Razor explanation for what happened, and why. In short, Weiss has consistently sought to give a reprieve to the son of the President of the United States, and the only apparent reason that two different, shockingly generous giveaways didn't go through is because they were exposed to public scrutiny before being finalized. Astoundingly, Hunter Biden's attorneys are insisting that the whistleblowers should be prosecuted, instead of their client:
While Mr. Biden’s legal team agrees that the I.R.S. agents affected the deal, his lawyers have contended to the Justice Department that by disclosing details about the investigation to Congress, they broke the law and should be prosecuted. “It appears that if it weren’t for the courageous actions of these whistle-blowers, who had nothing to gain and everything to lose, Hunter Biden would never have been charged at all,” a team of lawyers for one of the I.R.S. agents said in a statement, adding that the initial agreement reflected preferential treatment.
Absolutely brazen. I can imagine why they're frustrated with the whistleblowers, who seem to have ruined the plea deal of a lifetime for Hunter Biden (I'm sure they're livid with the judge for the same reason), but it's breathtaking to see them calling for legal consequences against career, nonpartisan agents who had the temerity to tell the truth. As for Weiss, "he is legally barred from discussing an open investigation," the Times writes, but, "a senior law enforcement official with knowledge of the situation pushed back on the idea that Mr. Weiss had been influenced by outside pressures, and ascribed any shifts to the typical ebb and flow of negotiations." Please. His team was reportedly on track to spare Hunter Biden even a slap on the wrist until the ousted IRS investigators spoke out. They then cooked up a pair of misdemeanors and an unusual 'diversion' scheme under which the firearm-related felony would effectively disappear -- plus, as we discovered thanks to the judge's fateful question, an apparent 'future immunity' handshake agreement.
So it went from a total victory for Hunter Biden to near-total victory for Hunter Biden. It's unclear what the future holds now, due to what happened in that Delaware courtroom a few weeks ago, but all these unfolding events, coupled with the Times and Politico articles, underscore two realities: First, Weiss should be regarded as a political actor whose overarching agenda in this entire matter seems to be accountability avoidance for anyone named Biden. Second, directly relatedly, it shows why elevating Weiss to special counsel status is such a farce. Based on what we've seen thus far, I've developed a theory on what is likely to come next. The Times story further fortifies my analysis.
Having gotten 'caught' and embarrassed for a second time, Weiss will exercise his new authority to go a little bit harder at Hunter Biden (while still taking care to insulate 'the Big Guy), without fully throwing the book at him. Just as we saw after the IRS whistleblowers stepped forward, Weiss now needs to save some face, but his inclination to protect the Bidens to the greatest extent possible will likely remain intact. This is not generally the disposition of a prosecutor, but Weiss has repeatedly hampered and stymied his own investigation -- closing off key lines of inquiry, barring pursuit of certain witnesses and questions, disregarding serious evidence, allowing statues of limitation to expire on serious offenses, and of course green-lighting an outrageous plea deal. He is unfit to be the special counsel in this case. I'll leave you with this important thread from one of the whistleblower's attorneys, having read both the Times and Politico articles:
First and foremost, it's shocking on its face that prosecutors were willing to let Hunter Biden off scot free. But piecing together the two stories with what we already know, they raise even more alarm bells about how this case was handled. /2
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) August 20, 2023
In case the letter to Weiss wasn't enough, Clark starts requesting in-person meetings. He gets one with Weiss in Jan. 2023, where the lawyer for the son of the most powerful man in the world tries to gaslight Weiss about where the true pressure to succumb was coming from. /12 pic.twitter.com/4GZOMwAILn
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) August 20, 2023
The rest of the timeline is just wild. Main DOJ tells Clark the "next steps" would come in Delaware. Four days later the IRS whistleblowers were removed. The same day the "familiar figure" of AUSA Wolf proposed the UBER-sweetheart deal with no charges or plea whatsoever. /18 pic.twitter.com/xLZ9jE8jlk
— Tristan Leavitt (@tristanleavitt) August 20, 2023
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