Hunter Biden’s first court date set for July 26 after plea deal on tax, gun charges
WASHINGTON — First son Hunter Biden is scheduled to formally plead guilty to tax and gun charges on July 26 at a hearing in his hometown Wilmington, Delaware.
The 53-year-old son of President Biden is expected to be sentenced to probation — drawing howls of an alleged double standard from attorneys whose clients received much harsher penalties.
US District Judge Maryellen Noreika, a nominee of former President Donald Trump who was selected with input from Delaware’s two Democratic senators, will hold a “combined initial appearance and plea hearing” at 10 a.m. on Wednesday, July 26.
It’s unclear if Hunter will be given his sentence at the hearing or if Noreika will schedule a subsequent appearance to formalize penalties.
Some legal critics of the plea deal say that opponents can make an attempt to derail the arrangement by asking Noreika to scrap the plan.
“A plea ‘deal’ is a tentative arrangement worked out between a prosecutor and a defendant. However, it has no legal effect on his status unless and until approved by a judge,” said George Washington University law professor John Banzhaf.
“The judge obviously has discretion as to who might speak [at a hearing], and how much weight to give to what they say,” Banzhaf told The Post.
“Here, I believe that if responsible members of Congress were to tell the judge — and make at least a prima facie case — that they had and are in the process of developing more information that Hunter had been involved in more crimes — perhaps with the ‘big guy’ —and more serious crimes which would warrant greater punishment, probably including at least some jail time, it is possible if not likely that the judge would not accept the ‘sweetheart’ plea deal now and at this time, and would at the very least delay it until further information is brought forth,” Banzhaf said.
House Republicans are considering the option, though some view it as a longshot.
The president’s son agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to pay taxes in 2017 and 2018 and a felony count for being a drug user in possession of a gun, which he purchased in 2018 by lying about his drug use on a federal gun-purchase form, Delaware US Attorney David Weiss said Tuesday.
The gun charge will be expunged after two years of probation, according to the deal.
Comparable tax and firearms charges routinely result in prison time and critics fumed that Hunter Biden wasn’t even charged with money laundering, drug crimes or working as an unregistered lobbyist under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, despite alleged evidence of such crimes in bank records and documents from his abandoned laptop.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Chris Clark said that it’s his understanding that the probe of his client is “resolved” and said in an MSNBC interview that the first son’s infamous laptop, which the FBI retrieved from a Delaware repairman in December 2019, played no role in the charges.
“I can’t recall being asked about it,” Clark told MSNBC’s Katy Tur. “There’s nothing about the situation that’s been filed that has a thing to do with the laptop.”
Weiss said Tuesday his investigation was “ongoing,” though congressional Republicans fear that the assertion is a tactic to avoid sharing documents in response to their requests.
Hunter Biden reportedly borrowed $2 million last year from wealthy Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris to pay off his tax bill on millions of income from countries where Joe Biden held sway as vice president, such as China, Romania and Ukraine. Paying off the bill didn’t absolve him legally of the original nonpayment.
President Biden interacted with many business associates of Hunter and first brother James Biden while he was vice president and the House Oversight Committee is investigating an FBI informant’s tipoff that Joe and Hunter Biden were involved in an alleged $10 million bribery scheme involving Ukrainian gas company Burisma, which also paid Hunter up to $1 million per year to serve on its board from 2014-2019, beginning when his father took over the Obama administration’s Ukraine portfolio.
