Hunter Biden’s defense team on Wednesday rejected a plea agreement after a federal judge forced prosecutors to confirm that the deal did in fact not include immunity from future potential charges related to Hunter Biden acting as an agent for foreign governments.
According to the New York Times, Judge Maryellen Noreika had asked Leo Wise, a top prosecutor in the case, if the plea deal meant Hunter Biden would be immune from prosecution for other possible crimes, specifically including crimes related to the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA).
When Wise said no, Biden’s lead lawyer, Chris Clark, reportedly then said the agreement was “null and void.”
Former top Trump administration official Kash Patel, a former public defender and former national security prosecutor, said the judge specifically mentioning FARA indicates that the issue had come up during the discovery process of the case.
“If that issue is going to be legally precluded from being prosecuted in the future, she has the responsibility to demand that answer from the DOJ,” Patel said.
He added that it appeared that Hunter Biden’s lawyers thought that they had negotiated their way out of future charges related to violating FARA, which would be a felony with prison time.
“It looks as if they just canned the plea agreement because — having been over there on the defense side, you quietly know when you’ve lost, and they lost on the FARA point is my first reaction, which to me tells me the DOJ tried to bury the FARA conviction,” he said,
Patel explained that FARA requires that American citizens register with the U.S. government if they take jobs with foreign governments.
“The law just says you have to register, you have to put the government on notice, and it doesn’t cost you anything. It just says file a piece of paper. It’s literally like one page. And it just says, ‘Here, I’m registered. You DOJ are aware of it. Track it all you want.’ That’s it,” he said.
“If you failed to register, and you lobby for a foreign government — say you go to the Ukrainians, say you go to the Chinese and you say, ‘My daddy’s gonna get you all the private equity deals you want,’ or, ‘My dad he’s gonna get you a federal prosecutor fired in your home country, then we’ll get you the billion dollars.’ He never registered to do those representative works on behalf of those countries in America,” Patel said.
Patel said former President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was prosecuted for failing to register as a foreign agent.
“DOJ has had an awful track record of prosecuting these people because so many people in government leave and do this conduct and they don’t register, which — I don’t know why — I think they’re just trying to be shady, like Hunter Biden,” he said.
Patel praised Noreika for being “savvy,” but said the plea deal “could come back.”
“We all know who [the prosecutors] work for — Merrick Garland, Christopher Wray, Daddy Joe Biden, so they could go back and loop in a foreign plea agreement, but I’m not sure that’s going to work in this case, given this explosive rejection by both sides saying the plea deal’s off,” he said.
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