Hunting The Hunter, Con't

The weird legal saga of Hunter Biden continues, as Special Counsel David Weiss is now charging the President's son with felony gun possession.

 

President Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden has been indicted by special counsel David Weiss on felony gun charges.

The charges bring renewed legal pressure on the younger Biden after a plea agreement he struck with prosecutors imploded in recent months.

The younger Biden has been charged with two counts related to false statements in purchasing the firearm and a third count on illegally obtaining a firearm while addicted to drugs. The three charges carry a maximum prison sentence of 25 years, when added together.

Prosecutors have spent years scrutinizing Hunter Biden's business endeavors and personal life -- a probe that appeared to culminate in a plea agreement the two sides struck in June, which would have allowed him to plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax offenses and enter into a pretrial diversion program to avoid prosecution on a felony gun charge.

But that deal fell apart during a court hearing in July after U.S. Judge Maryellen Noreika expressed concern over the structure of the agreement and questioned the breadth of an immunity deal, exposing fissures between the two parties.


Weeks later, on Aug. 11, Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss, who was originally appointed by then-President Donald Trump, to special counsel, granting him broader authority to press charges against Hunter Biden in any district in the country.

Prosecutors subsequently informed the court that a new round of negotiations had reached "an impasse," and attorneys for Hunter Biden accused Weiss' office of "reneging" on their agreement.

 

So yeah, 25 years in federal prison is no joke, but as Marcy Wheeler wrote over the weekend, Weiss may not have the slam dunk case that he thinks he does.

There’s something missing from coverage of the claim, made in the second-to-last sentence of a Speedy Trial filing submitted Wednesday, that David Weiss will indict Hunter Biden before September 29, when — according to calculations laid out by prosecutor Leo Wise in the filing — the Speedy Trial Act mandates an indictment.

None of the coverage has considered why David Weiss hasn’t already charged the President’s son.

The filing was submitted in response to an August 31 order from Judge Maryellen Noreika; its very last sentence politely asked her to butt out: “[T]he Government does not believe any action by the Court is necessary at this time.” Given the unusual nature of this legal proceeding, there may at least be question about Wise’s Speedy Trial calculations. One way or another, though, the Speedy Trial clock and the statute of limitations (which Wise said in July would expire on October 12) are ticking.

It would take probably half an hour to present the evidence for the weapons charge — which would consist of the form Hunter signed to purchase a gun, passages from Hunter’s book, a presumed grand jury transcript from Hallie Biden, and testimony from an FBI agent — to a grand jury. It would take maybe another ten minutes if Weiss wanted to add a false statements charge on top of the weapons charge. There certainly would be no need for a special grand jury.

Any tax charges would be more complicated, sure, but they would be in one or another district (probably Los Angeles), ostensibly severed from the weapons charge to which the misdemeanors planned as part of an aborted plea deal were linked.

So why wait? Why not simply indict and avoid any possible challenge to Speedy Trial calculations?

The answer may lie in something included in a long NYT story citing liberally from an anonymous senior law enforcement official who knew at least one thing that only David Weiss could know. That story explains that Weiss sought Special Counsel status, in part, to get, “added leverage in a revamped deal with Mr. Biden.”

If Weiss indeed sought Special Counsel status to get leverage for a deal, then at least last month when he asked for it, he wasn’t really planning on indicting Hunter Biden. He was hoping to get more tactical leverage to convince Hunter Biden to enter into a plea agreement that would better satisfy GOP bloodlust than the plea that failed in July.

Now he has used the opportunity presented by Noreika’s order to claim he really really is going to indict Hunter, a claim that set off predictably titillated reporting about the prospect of a Hunter Biden trial during the presidential election.

Again, if you’re going to charge Hunter Biden with a simple weapons charge, possibly a false statements charge, why not do it already, rather than threatening to do it publicly? Why not charge him in the week after Noreika entered that order, mooting all Speedy Trial concerns?

Whatever Weiss's game is, he's moving ahead now. Why he didn't do so before, well, we'll find out.