On Wednesday, Hunter Biden made his initial court appearance in a federal court in Delaware and entered a not-guilty plea after Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected his plea agreement, which she criticised as “not standard,” “unusual,” and perhaps even “unconstitutional.”
The president’s son was anticipated to enter into a pretrial diversion agreement with regard to a separate felony charge of possessing a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance as well as enter a guilty plea to two misdemeanour tax counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax.
All of that changed, however, when the judge—whom former President Donald Trump had nominated in 2017—started to express concerns about the diversion clause and the purported immunity that Hunter Biden would be granted in accordance with the plea agreement.
Hunter was still the subject of a federal investigation, though the prosecution would not specify why, and they admitted that the plea deal would not shield him from other allegations, such as those involving his international business operations.
Hunter Biden ultimately entered a not-guilty plea because Noreika could not agree to the plea agreement as written. Here are the hearing’s top five moments.
The uniqueness of various clauses in the plea bargains regarding the accusations, including the conditions of immunity and her participation in the case should a breach occur, was brought up by Noreika when she grilled both sides on Wednesday.
‘Not standard’
“There are some provisions in those agreements that are not standard and are different from what I normally see, so I think we need to walk through these documents and get some understanding of what is being proposed so that I can give due consideration to the determination that you all are asking me to make,” the judge said.
Noreika later asked the government whether it had “any precedent for agreeing not to prosecute crimes that have nothing to do with the case or the charges being diverted?”
“I’m not aware of any, Your Honor,” prosecutor Leo Wise responded.
Noreika frequently voiced her doubts about the legality of the diversion agreement pertaining to the felony gun charge, highlighting the main problem with the arrangement as the fact that if Hunter Biden broke the terms of the agreement, the judge would have to make a finding of fact before the government could file charges.
In exchange for Hunter Biden’s guilty plea to the less serious misdemeanour tax charges and compliance with the agreement’s conditions for roughly 24 months, the government agreed to drop the more serious federal firearms case against him. The government would attempt to file the serious firearms charge against Hunter Biden if he broke the terms of the diversion.
This was the portion of the diversion that Noreika rejected, claiming it would be unconstitutional as charging decisions are made by the executive branch, not the judicial branch. At that point, the government would present that information to the judge, and the judge would then be required to decide whether charges should be brought.
“Do you have any authority that any court has ever accepted that or said that they would do that?” Noreika asked.
“No, Your Honor, this was crafted to suit the facts and circumstances,” Wise replied.
Noreika remarked that she considered that to be “outside of my lane,” stressing that if the diversion agreement were found to be unlawful, the entire plea agreement would also be invalid, negating Hunter Biden’s anticipated immunity.
Chinese payments
Hunter acknowledged to Noreika that he had received more than $600,000 from a business backed by the Chinese Communist Party, defying President Biden’s assertion that no one in his family had “made money from China.”
According to the official court record, the prosecution claimed in their suggested plea deal that Hunter received $664,000 from a “Chinese infrastructure investment company.”
The judge was then informed by Hunter that he received $664,000 from a business he founded in 2017 with the head of the CEFC, which is supported by the CCP.
“I started a company [in 2017] called Hudson West, Your Honor, and my partner was associated with a Chinese energy company called CEFC,” Hunter said.
“Who was your partner?” the court asked.
“I don’t know how to spell his name, Yi Jianming is the chairman of that company,” Hunter responded.
“$664,000 from a Chinese infrastructure investment company – is that one of the companies we’ve already talked about?” the judge continued.
“I believe so, yes, Your Honor,” he said, before adding, “I believe CEFC.”
President Biden’s earlier denials are directly refuted by Hunter’s apparent admission that he received more than $500,000 from a Chinese corporation.
“My son has not made money in terms of this thing about, what are you talking about, China,” then-candidate Biden told then-President Donald Trump during an October 2020 debate.
“The only guy who made money from China is this guy,” Biden said at the time. “He’s the only one. Nobody else has made money from China.”
After the House Oversight Committee claimed that subpoenaed financial records showed that members of the Biden family received more than $1 million in payments from accounts related to Hunter Biden’s business partner Rob Walker and their Chinese business endeavours in 2017, Biden once more denied the accusations.
“That’s not true,” the president said on March 17.
‘No deal’
After finding that the plea agreement did not grant the president’s son wide immunity, Hunter’s legal counsel deemed the arrangement “null and void” and revoked the sentence.
When the judge asked the government to file a complaint under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, a scuffle ensued.
Noreika questioned whether there was a “meeting of the minds here” over the degree of immunity Hunter was anticipating after the prosecution confirmed.
“As stated by the government just now, I don’t agree with what the government said,” Hunter’s lawyer, Chris Clark, responded.
“So, I mean, these are contracts,” the judge replied. “To be enforceable, there has to be a meeting of the minds. So, what do we do now?”
“Then there is no deal,” the government responded.
“Do we need to talk about a preliminary hearing since we didn’t really need to do one with the agreement?” the judge asked.
“We’ll waive the preliminary hearing,” Clark responded. “As far as I’m concerned, the plea agreement is null and void. We are going to have to discuss things with the government.”
Rejected
After coming back from a scheduled break, Clark agreed to the government’s demands that immunity be restricted to transgressions discovered during their investigation into Hunter’s tax returns and the unauthorised purchase of a pistol.
However, Noreika said that both parties were attempting to get her to “rubber stamp the agreement” and asserted that she was unable to do so.
“Again, you all are telling me just rubber stamp the agreement, Your Honor, because all we’re doing is recommending a plea,” she said. “But it seems like the argument you’re making is form over substance.”
“What’s funny to me is you put me right smack in the middle of the diversion agreement that I should have no role in, you plop meet right in there, and then on the thing that I would normally have the ability to sign off on or look at in the context of a plea agreement, you just take it out and you say, ‘Your Honor, don’t pay any attention to that provision not to prosecute because we put it in an agreement that’s beyond your ability,'” she continued.
“So, this is what I am going to do. These agreements are not straightforward and they contain some atypical provisions. I am not criticizing you for coming up with those, I think that you have worked hard to come up with creative ways to deal with this. But I am not in a position where I can decide to accept or reject the plea agreement, so I need to defer it.”
“So, I cannot accept the plea agreement today,” she added.
The aftermath
After Hunter’s plea agreement broke, House Republicans expressed cautious hope, saying it “collapsed under the weight of its own blatant corruption.”
They claim that prison time may once again be considered.
Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., stated in an interview with Fox News Digital that Biden has two additional opportunities—during the pretrial and trial—to accept a plea agreement that might be more severe than the first.
“That could be something that’s going on behind the scenes of the DOJ, saying, ‘Oh, what is it we could work out with Hunter that, in fact, we get this judge to go away?’ Because there’s very little likelihood that Hunter Biden would win this case,” said Issa, a member of the House Judiciary Committee. “So now the question is, what is he willing to plead to that would be less than what he might be sentenced to if he loses? And so I fully expect that some of that is going on behind the scenes as we speak, trying to figure out what the judge would accept.”
Issa claimed he initially supported the Delaware judge’s ruling but is dubious that the DOJ will now pursue serious legal action against Biden.
“My thought initially was, ‘Great. We have a judge that’s willing to do the right thing.’ But how are we going to get DOJ to do the right thing?” he said. “Remember, the Biden DOJ is the one that gave him a sweetheart deal, and now you’re expecting them to prosecute aggressively? I doubt that they will.”
“They do not prosecute the president, they don’t want to prosecute the president’s son, and they certainly don’t want to follow the leads that seem to lead from the president’s son to the president,” he continued.
“I’d love to ask for a change of prosecutors to ones that would actually prosecute, but I suspect that’s not possible,” Issa added. “So, one of the truisms that we expect right now is to have a comparatively lacklustre prosecution by those who were perfectly willing to give him a sweetheart deal.”
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee told Fox News Digital that the Biden family was given a significant setback by the court.
“Today’s development that Hunter Biden’s sweetheart deal has now turned sour is welcome news to every American – it collapsed under the weight of its own blatant corruption,” Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., said Wednesday.
“The two-tiered system of justice that has metastasized under the Biden administration just received a swift kick in the ribs,” she said. “Nobody is exempt from following the law in this country, especially those with the last name of Biden.”
