Breaking News: Hunter Biden gets a deal
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Breaking News: Hunter Biden gets a deal
Fox News reports that Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two counts of willful failure to pay income taxes and one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.
This is part of a sweetheart plea deal that will (of course) result in no jail time, just “diversion programming” and probation. It’s a diversion, all right. Sources say this is intended to bring an end to Hunter’s potential legal liability in all matters being investigated by federal authorities, including his shady foreign deals, Burisma money, bribery and influence peddling allegations, etc. etc. etc.
But other sources said all that is excluded from this deal.
The DOJ must be hoping that this mild slap on the wrist will make a loud enough noise to divert the public’s attention from all the other potential Biden charges they’re trying to sweep under the rug. I wouldn’t count on that. All this will do is make it even clearer than before that we have a two-tiered, politicized justice system where political opponents like Donald Trump face dozens of federal charges over paperwork disputes while Democrats can be up to their eyebrows in sleaze and slime away scot-free. I hope they are proven wrong by a massive uprising of outraged voters at the polls.
UPDATE: US Attorney David Weiss said that the plea deal given to Hunter Biden on tax and gun charges does not close the investigation of his other issues, which is "ongoing." This contradicts an earlier statement to CBS News by Biden's attorney Chris Clark that it was his “understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved.”
https://dailycaller.com/2023/06/20/us-attorney-weiss-hunter-case-not-closed
The Bret Baier interview with President Trump
Last night, Fox News aired a wide-ranging interview with former President Trump. Here is one of the most headline-making segments about how Trump would have prevented and now would stop the Russia-Ukraine war:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-claims-conversation-putin-delayed-russian-invasion-ukraine
But the part getting the most attention is Trump’s exchange with Bret Baier about the federal charges against him and whether he had classified documents or tried to hide them or showed them to anyone who didn’t have a security clearance:
Trump claimed he had every right to have those boxes, and he needed time to go through all the boxes which were filled with personal items, from magazine clippings to golf shirts, when the FBI raided his home and took everything. He also suggested that left-wing radicals could be putting classified documents into the boxes to frame him, since they carried them away without letting his lawyers be present or see what was in them.
As for the audio tape that the FBI claims shows he was displaying a classified document to someone else, Trump said “Bret, there was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else, talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not. That was not a document. I didn’t have any document per se. There was nothing to declassify, these were newspaper stories, magazine stories, and articles."
While I understand his eagerness to deny charges that he believes (I think with good reason) are politicized and bogus, the fact is that he’s facing 37 federal charges pressed by people who unfortunately have a lot of power and have proved they’re willing to abuse it. Just ask all the people who now have prison records for walking past the Capitol on January 6th, 2021. A number of commentators have jumped on Trump’s remarks and noted that the prosecution can use that tape in court to point out any inconsistencies in his defense and paint it as a self-incriminating statement. Here are a couple of takes from a Trump detractor and supporter:
There’s a reason why the Miranda rights warn people, “Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law,” and that goes triple for Trump, whom they’re literally trying to imprison for things he’s said.
As Bonchie at Redstate.com puts it, “Trump is going to be Trump” so there’s no use getting upset about it, and that Trump seems to believe that if he wins the PR battle, he wins the case. But that’s not necessarily true, and every time he gives an interview like this, he hands ammunition to his enemies while causing new headaches for his own lawyers.
You know, when someone asks you to comment on a pending legal case against you, there’s nothing wrong with saying, “On advice of my counsel, I’m not allowed to talk about that. But I’ll tell you all about it after I’m fully exonerated. Next question.”
Trump preliminary trial date is set
In breaking news, Judge Aileen Cannon set August 14th as a surprise preliminary trial date for President Trump in the “classified” documents case, but that’s likely to change, so don’t cancel any appointments over it. She also ordered all pre-trial motions to be in by July. Most analysts expected this to be drawn out and not start until 2025, but it sounds as if the judge wants to get it over with fast. That could be arranged by throwing it out completely, which is the decision I think should be reached. This is a developing story, so we’ll have to wait and see, but it sounds as if we might not be waiting as long as we expected.