I love Ken's solution to "we don't know anything, but we have to comment". 1) Point out that there is pressure to say something definitive when we don't know anything. 2) Berate those that fall for that. 3) say what do know, provide a set of plausible scenarios that could fit the facts, but point out we are missing a crucial piece of information.
The result 1) Ken get's the click bait click, and 2) people who read the article actually come out knowing more than the did before they clicked, and maybe able to exercise patience wating for a more definitive conclusion.
... oh and when the plea agreement becomes available Ken just needs to point to 'this supports conclusion 2" rather than him picking some conclusion and back peddling on it when more information comes out.
I went to bed early last night and missed this. But also, I've come to the conclusion that keeping up on all the media reports on anything is an exercise in futility and despair. Because of the flood of nonsense that all the media spews now. (Even the media I like, unfortunately!)
Some people have been sending me, or commenting with, alternate takes on what happened with the Hunter Biden plea deal.
I’m not certain I am right on my take, which I view as only the most likely scenario. That’s in part because I believe my experience leads me to wield Occam’s Razor differently — I don’t think some of the scenarios proposed can be called the “simplest,” based on my experience with the system. But I could be wrong.
In judging other people’s takes, I respectfully invite you to consider (1) does the author have training and experience with the procedures at issue, (2) does the author insist that their interpretation is the only plausible one, (3) is the tone hysterical, and (4) does the conclusion align 100% with the priors of the author.
There's a lawyer on TikTok who has suggested that the crimes Hunter is charged with are never prosecuted (apart from the current president's son) and that's why the lawyers struggled with drafting the plea agreement. They just didn't know how to go about doing something that they never do in the usual course of things. I don't know whether that's fanciful, but there you have it.
That’s not right. The tax misdo charges are prosecuted all the time. The addict-in-possession is very rarely charged, and usually when it’s present with something else or in special circumstances.
It is hard for me to believe that a federal prosecutor as competent as Leo Wise is purported to be would negligently leave any room for ambiguity regarding the terms of the deal. Same goes for Weiss. Ambiguous plea agreements are typically construed against the government. And there is no legitimate reason for the government's failure to have publicly filed the agreement in the past five weeks. The case so far appears to have more than its share of unusual events. Perhaps the government and the defense were hoping that the judge wouldn't probe too deeply. Instead, she did her job.
Eh; we're looking at a situation involving a person who's famous for having lots of money, poor impulse control, and very accomplished relative. The simplest explanation is that at least one of the people making decisions is less competent than their reputation suggests, simply because they are more or less guaranteed to have been chosen based on a reputation for competence and not much else. It's basically the Peter Principle, but applied to contractors and the like.
And colors the current prosecutor’s role negatively, where the “appearance” actually seems politically motivated and more to do with keeping trump out of the news and casting a shadow over President Biden.
Situations like this call for AN EMERGENCY podcast, don’t you think? I need opinions and guesses more than I need facts. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it, this whole situation just confirms ALL my priors, regardless of any facts.
And an emergency podcast is required so I don't actually have to read or think! And someone needs to make sure Josh isn't spending all summer drinking old fashions on Fire Island.
That diversion agreement is upsetting. It's baffling that any lawyer whose client has an addiction could look at it and advise their client: this is fine. It seems unlikely that Hunter Biden's lawyer is somehow particularly incompetent so do the terms of the diversion (not the bizarrely regressed nonprosecution terms) give us a glimpse into the business as usual that unfamous defendants have to deal with when diverted?
I've provided expert recommendations to courts about diversions for addictions. These are objectively terrible.
Because time and science have advanced beyond the 1960s and we came up with better interventions than screamshaming folks into abstinence: namely, harm reduction. We recognize that relapse is an expected part of recovery and built that into (effective) treatment plans. Change is hard and nonlinear and backslides are more effective as learning opportunities. (To be fair, that's not just addiction: change is general a process of failing towards success. consider any new year's resolution and the ratio of times you intended to do it versus times you actually did it.)
Sections 10.c, d, and h are incompatible with contemporary standards of addiction treatment because the goal of treatment, which has a nonlinear coarse, has a binary legal condition. Unless the Delaware District defines "refrain" and "material breach" more understandingly than I'm reading it?
Section 10.e reflects a disheartening naivete. There should already be a treatment provider arranged and any changes should need to be reported to the Probation office, not directed by them. Otherwise, a defendant is at the mercy of an overworked case manager coordinating an appointment with an overworked mental health worker listed on an outdated internal directory who likely quit ages ago and the fact that he never made it to his first appointment with a provider who never scheduled him because the email bounced because they don't work there anymore: well, he should have thought of that earlier instead of disrespecting the court with his ne'er-do-well attitude.
The terms as written are a set up for failure for anyone with an addiction.
It is clear they did not intend to bring any infractions to the judge unless his infraction became known to the public. Then they also wanted a judge to declare he broke the deal, and the government not the judge to decide the consequence. It was broad becuase they had a wink wink nudge nudge deal on it.
For the first two "things that may have happened," you note that they would be mistakes. Would they be primarily prosecution mistakes, or mistakes shared by the prosecution and defense?
By that I think I mean: Who would stand to benefit more from some ambiguity here, the defense or the prosecution?
Didn't the prosecutor just offer to testify about what the whistleblowers on the "weaponization" committee said about how he was blocked? The Dispatch noted it this am with "Weiss calls Jordan's bluff." When I read that, I thought Weiss' testifying dilutes the case the Rs are trying to make because he could appear to be very credible, unlike the whistleblowers. This works against that. I'm confused.
I'm sure he doesn't want to testify now that it is clear they wrote a special clause in an unrelated diversion agreement to give him immunity, and they admitted it was completely unique to the Hunter case.
I'm guessing it will be fairly easy to show he was in fact colluding to slide a sweetheart deal under the table.
I'm guessing it's 'fairly easy' for you to come up with that interpretation when you are perfectly willing to lie about what the judge said in court (as you did in your claims below about gun cases that the judge has handled before).
Probably best to read the transcript before pulling a lie out of your ass. But lazily making up your facts is a much better way to go through life if you don't care about truth. You and Trump are two peas in a pod. Here's the quote:
" THE COURT: I have had one or two cases involving a person struggling with addiction who bought a gun, we usually see a felony charge for false statement. The Defendant has admitted that his statement was false, but he wasn't charged."
The judge seemed to be quite concerned that prosecutors were trying very hard to categorize this as a certain kind of plea which constrained her authority while hiding essential elements of it in the part she had no authority over. That whole maneuver just smells dishonest to me.
Could the government be wanting Hunter to plead guilty as a way of later "proving" that he knowingly took money from a foreign government and then they only have to prove he acted as an agent of that govt because he's already admitted to the facts related to the payment?
Basically, can they use the guilty pleasure against him in later prosecutions?
Isn’t that essentially what happened in Trump’s Stormy Daniels prosecution?
Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion (on which the prosecutor had him cold), and also to a number of largely unrelated charges involving the payment to Ms. Daniels. His total sentence was considerably less than he would have received if he had contested just the tax charges.
Bragg later used that guilty plea as a wedge for his own charges against Trump — the underlying crime to which he could attach the falsifying business record charge.
I doubt there was any conspiracy in that case, just a federal prosecutor keeping his options open and a glory-seeking crapweasel taking advantage, but it’s hard to believe that the feds tacked those charges onto Cohen’s plea deal without at least casting an eye in Trump’s direction.
How do you get from Hunter Biden's intent here to Joe Biden? Cohen's actions were him acting on behalf of Trump to pay Stormy. We don't have Hunter acting on behalf of Joe.
Ken said that trying to preserve or strengthen a later cause of action based on the wording of the plea deal was too cute by half.
I was pointing out that it’s not unheard of, and particularly not unheard of in cases adjacent to politics. Given that Hunter’s legal team appears to have believed that the plea deal would have granted him immunity for all crimes related to his business transactions, and that Hunter Biden was paid a tremendous amount of money for, effectively, being Joe Biden’s son (and arranged for at least one meeting between his business partners and his father), then whether or not the plea deal preclude’s coming after Hunter for those transactions bears pretty heavily on whether an ambitious prosecutor might bootstrap their way up to the President.
Again, my point was not that I believe this to be happening. I have no special insight into the minds of any of the involved parties. I am saying that it cannot be dismissed as ridiculous because we have seen something very similar happen in the not too distant past.
Looking at the "whistleblower" testimony, it took so long because Trump, Giuliani, and others trying to use Hunter Biden for Trump's political gain made life much, much more difficult for the DOJ.
Which is as it should be: The "life" of government agencies, especially those with power to destroy people, should be made as difficult as possible. In this, rare, instance Trump's gain is the people's.
hunter isn’t an agency. he isn’t government. he’s a person. no one gains by people meddling in things for their own gain, we all lose. some of us lose our minds.
Republicans are bay sh*t crazy, with no credibility on good government. Not in the Trump era. Still: 5 years, to bring charges on lying on a gun application? Letting the statute of limitations run, on his earlier un paid taxes? I dunno, something stinks here.
I think there are probably thousands of people who lie about drug use on gun applications and never suffer any negative legal consequences. The only exception I know of is a case where the gun was used in a crime and so police went back and looked at the original document. But I imagine it’s difficult to enforce.
I’m not sure about the tax stuff, but I don’t particularly find that strange either. The IRS is dramatically understaffed and Republicans rejected a bill to increase IRS funding most likely because they don’t want anyone taking a closer look at their taxes! But people get away with late payments all the time.
If this happened to a regular person, I doubt it would even get to court. But because Republicans are *obsessed* with Hunter, they’re going through his entire life with a fine tooth comb to find any potential mistake or potentially embarrassing thing because they can’t really find much evidence to implicate Joe Biden in any wrong doing - and I’m *sure* they looked long and hard.
Is a lot of the consulting stuff that Biden did for Ukrainian or Chinese firms disturbing? Undoubtedly. But as someone who lives in NJ and is quite familiar with Trump’s legal entanglements, I can assure you, the deals he’s made with foreign leaders would make this look like chump change. Heck, the deals his children have made with foreign government controlled companies dwarf this scandal in comparison- and they were made while Trump was still President.
There’s no clearer way to say this. Republicans follow two completely different standards when dealing with identical issues based on which party the offender belongs to. That’s the opposite of justice.
But the article itself reinforces the idea that this is incredibly rare and the mother was only prosecuted for the drug violation *as a result of the investigation pertaining to her 6 year old shooting his teacher.* whereas, as far as I can tell, Biden was only charged with the drug charge because his last name is Biden.
The judge herself said she personally had it prosecuted by the goivernment several times, always as a felony with no diversion. So it's clearly common.
This would have been Hunter Biden's gain. Trump's actions were akin to a governor making it difficult to prosecute someone who'd committed crimes, either preventing their conviction or forcing a plea deal much, much less than they deserve.
Ken updated. The language used does seem to cover any prosecution from anything listed as a fact in the agreement, though not as explicitly as it should if that was the intent. Poor drafting.
"The government responded that the deal only precluded the government from prosecuting any other tax crimes related to these facts; Hunter Biden’s lawyers said that was wrong and if that was the case there was no deal. The judge told them to go talk and work it out. Apparently they did - and Hunter Biden agreed with the government that he was only protected from further tax prosecution on these facts, not from other prosecutions based on other investigations — but the judge asked the parties to submit briefs clarifying the scope of the non-prosecution promise and to come back, and did not accept the plea."
Yep. When faced with explicit on the record questioning. The prosecutor had two options. Admit what a plain reading would suggest. Whihc is that at a minimum it provided a solid argument for the defense that he had immunity, and immediately be exposed as colluding with the defense, or deny. In that "deer in the headlights" moment. the prosecutor chose to deny. The defense immediately admited that was the whole point of the ploy and said there is no deal if the immunity in the document is not valid. When they did a sidebar, they came back with a quick oral, "it doesn't cover immunity for foreign dealings" hoping the judge would take such an indetermenate oral agreement and sign the original broad documents. They figured it gave them significant future wriggle room. And was the best they would get know that the scheme was exposed. The judge didn't buy it. Putting off the settlement until it was all in clear writing.
Your point that we as news consumers want information and we want it now is so true.
This attitude can be attributed to that great late-20th-century philosopher-prince, Jim Morrison (aka Mister Mojo Risin'), who spoke for we Boomers when he sang,
Well! I was under the weather yesterday, and actually didn't know anything about this until I could read Ken's thoughtful analysis of what happened. It's nice to get facts and intelligent surmises, as opposed to clickbait nonsense. Thank you for making plain what is legally happening. (At least, as plain as can be supposed from the available facts.)
I love Ken's solution to "we don't know anything, but we have to comment". 1) Point out that there is pressure to say something definitive when we don't know anything. 2) Berate those that fall for that. 3) say what do know, provide a set of plausible scenarios that could fit the facts, but point out we are missing a crucial piece of information.
The result 1) Ken get's the click bait click, and 2) people who read the article actually come out knowing more than the did before they clicked, and maybe able to exercise patience wating for a more definitive conclusion.
... oh and when the plea agreement becomes available Ken just needs to point to 'this supports conclusion 2" rather than him picking some conclusion and back peddling on it when more information comes out.
Wet blanket Ken is best Ken.
ONLY Ken
What about Kenny Raincloud? Surely very different from Wet Blanket Ken—in elevation, anyway.
I’m glad I saw it here before i heard any bullshit about it anywhere else.
I was just coming here to say that. I hadn't heard any news about it until Ken's email.
I went to bed early last night and missed this. But also, I've come to the conclusion that keeping up on all the media reports on anything is an exercise in futility and despair. Because of the flood of nonsense that all the media spews now. (Even the media I like, unfortunately!)
Some people have been sending me, or commenting with, alternate takes on what happened with the Hunter Biden plea deal.
I’m not certain I am right on my take, which I view as only the most likely scenario. That’s in part because I believe my experience leads me to wield Occam’s Razor differently — I don’t think some of the scenarios proposed can be called the “simplest,” based on my experience with the system. But I could be wrong.
In judging other people’s takes, I respectfully invite you to consider (1) does the author have training and experience with the procedures at issue, (2) does the author insist that their interpretation is the only plausible one, (3) is the tone hysterical, and (4) does the conclusion align 100% with the priors of the author.
There's a lawyer on TikTok who has suggested that the crimes Hunter is charged with are never prosecuted (apart from the current president's son) and that's why the lawyers struggled with drafting the plea agreement. They just didn't know how to go about doing something that they never do in the usual course of things. I don't know whether that's fanciful, but there you have it.
That’s not right. The tax misdo charges are prosecuted all the time. The addict-in-possession is very rarely charged, and usually when it’s present with something else or in special circumstances.
The opening paragraph of this should be used as a disclaimer on any breaking news story, especially any politically charged one.
And the closing paragraph succinctly summarizes most breaking news items until more information comes out about them.
It is hard for me to believe that a federal prosecutor as competent as Leo Wise is purported to be would negligently leave any room for ambiguity regarding the terms of the deal. Same goes for Weiss. Ambiguous plea agreements are typically construed against the government. And there is no legitimate reason for the government's failure to have publicly filed the agreement in the past five weeks. The case so far appears to have more than its share of unusual events. Perhaps the government and the defense were hoping that the judge wouldn't probe too deeply. Instead, she did her job.
Eh; we're looking at a situation involving a person who's famous for having lots of money, poor impulse control, and very accomplished relative. The simplest explanation is that at least one of the people making decisions is less competent than their reputation suggests, simply because they are more or less guaranteed to have been chosen based on a reputation for competence and not much else. It's basically the Peter Principle, but applied to contractors and the like.
And colors the current prosecutor’s role negatively, where the “appearance” actually seems politically motivated and more to do with keeping trump out of the news and casting a shadow over President Biden.
Situations like this call for AN EMERGENCY podcast, don’t you think? I need opinions and guesses more than I need facts. I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it, this whole situation just confirms ALL my priors, regardless of any facts.
And an emergency podcast is required so I don't actually have to read or think! And someone needs to make sure Josh isn't spending all summer drinking old fashions on Fire Island.
That diversion agreement is upsetting. It's baffling that any lawyer whose client has an addiction could look at it and advise their client: this is fine. It seems unlikely that Hunter Biden's lawyer is somehow particularly incompetent so do the terms of the diversion (not the bizarrely regressed nonprosecution terms) give us a glimpse into the business as usual that unfamous defendants have to deal with when diverted?
I've provided expert recommendations to courts about diversions for addictions. These are objectively terrible.
Because time and science have advanced beyond the 1960s and we came up with better interventions than screamshaming folks into abstinence: namely, harm reduction. We recognize that relapse is an expected part of recovery and built that into (effective) treatment plans. Change is hard and nonlinear and backslides are more effective as learning opportunities. (To be fair, that's not just addiction: change is general a process of failing towards success. consider any new year's resolution and the ratio of times you intended to do it versus times you actually did it.)
Sections 10.c, d, and h are incompatible with contemporary standards of addiction treatment because the goal of treatment, which has a nonlinear coarse, has a binary legal condition. Unless the Delaware District defines "refrain" and "material breach" more understandingly than I'm reading it?
Section 10.e reflects a disheartening naivete. There should already be a treatment provider arranged and any changes should need to be reported to the Probation office, not directed by them. Otherwise, a defendant is at the mercy of an overworked case manager coordinating an appointment with an overworked mental health worker listed on an outdated internal directory who likely quit ages ago and the fact that he never made it to his first appointment with a provider who never scheduled him because the email bounced because they don't work there anymore: well, he should have thought of that earlier instead of disrespecting the court with his ne'er-do-well attitude.
The terms as written are a set up for failure for anyone with an addiction.
It is clear they did not intend to bring any infractions to the judge unless his infraction became known to the public. Then they also wanted a judge to declare he broke the deal, and the government not the judge to decide the consequence. It was broad becuase they had a wink wink nudge nudge deal on it.
“clear”
They had the best lawyers money can buy.
Spending by their own claim, thousands of hours going over every detail.
They drafted an agreement that was by both parties admission, entirely without any precedent in court history.
And they cleverly removed from the judge the ability to make any decision about the consequences of any infraction.
It takes only a bare minimum of basic common sense to understand the implications.
Your copypasta isn’t more convincing the more times you post it.
No "copypasta" here. But of course you don't have to read it, if you don't particularly like the idea of dealing with an inconvenient truth.
I did read the entire hearing transcript, and associated docs.
BTW, I happen to deplore Trump, and think he has commited a ton more crimes than he is facing prosecution for.
Trump's children have taken corrupt influence peddling to a level Hunter could only dream of.
That does not mean I will be obtuse when "my side" is corrupt.
Honesty about the facts is the only path for integrity, even if it can be used to help "the bad guys".
Try it some time.
Do YOU read what you write before you post? Call me classist but I prefer the inconvenient truths that shake my reality to be spellchecked at least.
Ken,
For the first two "things that may have happened," you note that they would be mistakes. Would they be primarily prosecution mistakes, or mistakes shared by the prosecution and defense?
By that I think I mean: Who would stand to benefit more from some ambiguity here, the defense or the prosecution?
Shared but primarily the prosecution’s fault.
Didn't the prosecutor just offer to testify about what the whistleblowers on the "weaponization" committee said about how he was blocked? The Dispatch noted it this am with "Weiss calls Jordan's bluff." When I read that, I thought Weiss' testifying dilutes the case the Rs are trying to make because he could appear to be very credible, unlike the whistleblowers. This works against that. I'm confused.
I'm sure he doesn't want to testify now that it is clear they wrote a special clause in an unrelated diversion agreement to give him immunity, and they admitted it was completely unique to the Hunter case.
I'm guessing it will be fairly easy to show he was in fact colluding to slide a sweetheart deal under the table.
I'm guessing it's 'fairly easy' for you to come up with that interpretation when you are perfectly willing to lie about what the judge said in court (as you did in your claims below about gun cases that the judge has handled before).
Probably best to read the transcript before pulling a lie out of your ass. But lazily making up your facts is a much better way to go through life if you don't care about truth. You and Trump are two peas in a pod. Here's the quote:
" THE COURT: I have had one or two cases involving a person struggling with addiction who bought a gun, we usually see a felony charge for false statement. The Defendant has admitted that his statement was false, but he wasn't charged."
The judge seemed to be quite concerned that prosecutors were trying very hard to categorize this as a certain kind of plea which constrained her authority while hiding essential elements of it in the part she had no authority over. That whole maneuver just smells dishonest to me.
Thank you, Ken; clear and helpful as usual.
Thank you for this, Ken White! We miss popehat on twitter!
Could the government be wanting Hunter to plead guilty as a way of later "proving" that he knowingly took money from a foreign government and then they only have to prove he acted as an agent of that govt because he's already admitted to the facts related to the payment?
Basically, can they use the guilty pleasure against him in later prosecutions?
That’s too convoluted and cute.
Thank you for that expression. I have a few friends I can use it with!
Isn’t that essentially what happened in Trump’s Stormy Daniels prosecution?
Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion (on which the prosecutor had him cold), and also to a number of largely unrelated charges involving the payment to Ms. Daniels. His total sentence was considerably less than he would have received if he had contested just the tax charges.
Bragg later used that guilty plea as a wedge for his own charges against Trump — the underlying crime to which he could attach the falsifying business record charge.
I doubt there was any conspiracy in that case, just a federal prosecutor keeping his options open and a glory-seeking crapweasel taking advantage, but it’s hard to believe that the feds tacked those charges onto Cohen’s plea deal without at least casting an eye in Trump’s direction.
Maybe Wise is similarly eying bigger fish.
Trump is a third party to Cohen's deal. Is Hunter a third party to his own deal?
President Biden would be the third party.
Wise was originally a Trump DOJ selection, after all.
How do you get from Hunter Biden's intent here to Joe Biden? Cohen's actions were him acting on behalf of Trump to pay Stormy. We don't have Hunter acting on behalf of Joe.
You are overgeneralizing my comment.
Ken said that trying to preserve or strengthen a later cause of action based on the wording of the plea deal was too cute by half.
I was pointing out that it’s not unheard of, and particularly not unheard of in cases adjacent to politics. Given that Hunter’s legal team appears to have believed that the plea deal would have granted him immunity for all crimes related to his business transactions, and that Hunter Biden was paid a tremendous amount of money for, effectively, being Joe Biden’s son (and arranged for at least one meeting between his business partners and his father), then whether or not the plea deal preclude’s coming after Hunter for those transactions bears pretty heavily on whether an ambitious prosecutor might bootstrap their way up to the President.
Again, my point was not that I believe this to be happening. I have no special insight into the minds of any of the involved parties. I am saying that it cannot be dismissed as ridiculous because we have seen something very similar happen in the not too distant past.
Hunter thought the pleas deal covered EVERYTHING related to the issues? I still don’t understand why this all took 5 years Ken.
Looking at the "whistleblower" testimony, it took so long because Trump, Giuliani, and others trying to use Hunter Biden for Trump's political gain made life much, much more difficult for the DOJ.
Which is as it should be: The "life" of government agencies, especially those with power to destroy people, should be made as difficult as possible. In this, rare, instance Trump's gain is the people's.
hunter isn’t an agency. he isn’t government. he’s a person. no one gains by people meddling in things for their own gain, we all lose. some of us lose our minds.
He certainly claimed to act for his father and convinced foreign agents to hand him millions on those claims.
If Hunter wasn't government, he wouldn't be guarded by a Secret Service detail.
Want to offer a different explanation? Hint: Would he be government if he was 5?
For the purpose of gaining influence, yes. Most definitely.
nope. all family of presidents and former presidents are guarded. “govt” means those with actual government jobs. being guarded by ss isn’t a job.
So, Barron was government. The Obama girls were government?
C'mon, man.
C'mon man, indeed. Study the historical path from access to influence.
Access to a target-individual can be gained via diverse means.
The British didn't go directly to General Benedict Arnold; they approached his wife.
Nazi Germany was losing control over Hungary, so they wrapped the Regent's son in a carpet and spirited him away.
Security agencies worried about JFK's private dalliance with vulnerable individuals.
Buying Hunter was tantamount to acquiring a chunk of Joe.
Republicans are bay sh*t crazy, with no credibility on good government. Not in the Trump era. Still: 5 years, to bring charges on lying on a gun application? Letting the statute of limitations run, on his earlier un paid taxes? I dunno, something stinks here.
I think there are probably thousands of people who lie about drug use on gun applications and never suffer any negative legal consequences. The only exception I know of is a case where the gun was used in a crime and so police went back and looked at the original document. But I imagine it’s difficult to enforce.
I’m not sure about the tax stuff, but I don’t particularly find that strange either. The IRS is dramatically understaffed and Republicans rejected a bill to increase IRS funding most likely because they don’t want anyone taking a closer look at their taxes! But people get away with late payments all the time.
If this happened to a regular person, I doubt it would even get to court. But because Republicans are *obsessed* with Hunter, they’re going through his entire life with a fine tooth comb to find any potential mistake or potentially embarrassing thing because they can’t really find much evidence to implicate Joe Biden in any wrong doing - and I’m *sure* they looked long and hard.
Is a lot of the consulting stuff that Biden did for Ukrainian or Chinese firms disturbing? Undoubtedly. But as someone who lives in NJ and is quite familiar with Trump’s legal entanglements, I can assure you, the deals he’s made with foreign leaders would make this look like chump change. Heck, the deals his children have made with foreign government controlled companies dwarf this scandal in comparison- and they were made while Trump was still President.
There’s no clearer way to say this. Republicans follow two completely different standards when dealing with identical issues based on which party the offender belongs to. That’s the opposite of justice.
I've been looking, but I haven't been able to find a single case of someone prosecuted for lying about the "drug use" question on the ATF form.
This was the case I was referring to:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/virginia-mother-6-year-old-shot-teacher-pleads-guilty-using-marijuana-rcna88953
But the article itself reinforces the idea that this is incredibly rare and the mother was only prosecuted for the drug violation *as a result of the investigation pertaining to her 6 year old shooting his teacher.* whereas, as far as I can tell, Biden was only charged with the drug charge because his last name is Biden.
The judge herself said she personally had it prosecuted by the goivernment several times, always as a felony with no diversion. So it's clearly common.
This would have been Hunter Biden's gain. Trump's actions were akin to a governor making it difficult to prosecute someone who'd committed crimes, either preventing their conviction or forcing a plea deal much, much less than they deserve.
Ken updated. The language used does seem to cover any prosecution from anything listed as a fact in the agreement, though not as explicitly as it should if that was the intent. Poor drafting.
That's not what Ken wrote
"The government responded that the deal only precluded the government from prosecuting any other tax crimes related to these facts; Hunter Biden’s lawyers said that was wrong and if that was the case there was no deal. The judge told them to go talk and work it out. Apparently they did - and Hunter Biden agreed with the government that he was only protected from further tax prosecution on these facts, not from other prosecutions based on other investigations — but the judge asked the parties to submit briefs clarifying the scope of the non-prosecution promise and to come back, and did not accept the plea."
Yep. When faced with explicit on the record questioning. The prosecutor had two options. Admit what a plain reading would suggest. Whihc is that at a minimum it provided a solid argument for the defense that he had immunity, and immediately be exposed as colluding with the defense, or deny. In that "deer in the headlights" moment. the prosecutor chose to deny. The defense immediately admited that was the whole point of the ploy and said there is no deal if the immunity in the document is not valid. When they did a sidebar, they came back with a quick oral, "it doesn't cover immunity for foreign dealings" hoping the judge would take such an indetermenate oral agreement and sign the original broad documents. They figured it gave them significant future wriggle room. And was the best they would get know that the scheme was exposed. The judge didn't buy it. Putting off the settlement until it was all in clear writing.
Ken
Your point that we as news consumers want information and we want it now is so true.
This attitude can be attributed to that great late-20th-century philosopher-prince, Jim Morrison (aka Mister Mojo Risin'), who spoke for we Boomers when he sang,
"We want the world and we want it...NOW!!!"
Well! I was under the weather yesterday, and actually didn't know anything about this until I could read Ken's thoughtful analysis of what happened. It's nice to get facts and intelligent surmises, as opposed to clickbait nonsense. Thank you for making plain what is legally happening. (At least, as plain as can be supposed from the available facts.)
I came here for Overreaction Wednesday and instead get thoughtful, nuanced analysis. I feel so cheated and unsatisfied