On Monday’s broadcast of CNN’s “The Lead,” CNN Senior Legal Analyst Elie Honig stated that we’ve seen a recurring pattern where the Department of Justice moves towards “a very lenient disposition” on Hunter Biden, “they’re just about to lock in that lenient disposition, and then there arises pressure, either through whistleblower testimony or through public scrutiny, and then, DOJ backs off and says, actually, we’re not going to do that now that it’s been called out, we’re going to try to up it a little bit.” And argued that the “only way to restore any credibility” is to charge Hunter with everything they can and go to trial.

Honig said, “[I]t’s really inexplicable to me. First, we had basically five years of behind-the-scenes investigation with no transparency, no action, and some questions being asked, what’s taken so long? But in the last couple of months, we’ve seen a pattern here. … And we’ve now seen it play out two or three separate times. DOJ moves toward a very lenient disposition, they’re just about to lock in that lenient disposition, and then there arises pressure, either through whistleblower testimony or through public scrutiny, and then, DOJ backs off and says, actually, we’re not going to do that now that it’s been called out, we’re going to try to up it a little bit. And then that happened again. And then they go all the way to appointing a special counsel, the same guy who’s been presiding over the case for five-plus years already. So, I genuinely am perplexed by what DOJ’s doing here. I think they’ve made a real mess for themselves and now they’re going to have to deal with the consequences of it.”

He added, “DOJ has sort of been in a darned if they do, darned if they don’t posture on this from the start. But they’ve made it way worse by sort of careening back and forth here. It may well be that any deal is never going to be accepted as fair. So, if I’m in David Weiss’ shoes here — heaven help me — I would just say, look, we’re charging everything we have, we’re not in position to make a deal, it’ll go to trial, and we’ll let the jury decide this. I think that’s the only way to restore any credibility to this matter.”

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