The Hunter Mess

President Joe Biden, joined by First Lady Dr. Jill Biden and their children Ashley Biden and Hunter Biden, takes the oath of office as President of the United States Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2021, during the 59th Presidential Inauguration at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. (Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy)

Unequal Justice

How long will it take for U.S. Attorney David Weiss to testify publicly in front of the House, and Republicans? Kimberley Strassel at the WSJ guesses it could take a week for the Delaware prosecutor to unwind his office’s growing list of Hunter Biden special favors. That’s before mentioning its half-truths and outright dissembling.

Which is worse? The cover-up or the crime?

The Hunter Biden case collapsed under the most basic questions. So irregular and damaging to the Hunter investigation. It was more like a wedding where the bride and groom object to the wedding ceremony while all the wedding guests are left wondering why the heck they’re sitting in the church.

Selling Influence

One thing seems clear: the bigger the central government, the more regulations it imposes, the more resources it controls, and the more it pays to buy influence in the White House.

What’s Going On …

Is Hunter Biden’s plea agreement even worse than advertised? Hunter’s political product was selling influence.

What’s Ordinarily Ordinary?

• The provisions of a plea agreement are in the four corners of the plea agreement.
• They are quite standard.
• They are set out in crystal-clear terms.
• They don’t undercut what is supposed to be an investigation into more serious matters.

Why This Is Different

Ordinarily, the Department of Justice isn’t acting to protect the president of the United States from a politically sensitive investigation into an offspring’s corrupt business dealings.

What’s DOJ up To?

Hunter Biden sweeping immunity from future prosecution in a so-called diversion agreement related to his gun offense. Hunter is pleading guilty to two minor tax charges arising from the cascade of sleazy foreign money that poured into his accounts and was distributed to other family members.

Hunter isn’t pleading guilty to the gun charge, instead simply agreeing to a couple of years of probation to get off the hook. Any immunity term should have been in the plea deal but instead was in the diversion agreement, where it wouldn’t be expected.

The Judge Not Buying It

Judge Maryellen Noreika asked about a curious immunity clause that would appear to shield Hunter from additional charges tied to the conduct described in the plea agreement., reports Ms. Strassel:

(The judge) asked if (Hunter) might still face prosecution for, say, a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Mr. Weiss’s team—having publicly claimed that its investigation is “ongoing”—clearly felt it had no choice but to acknowledge he might. This shocked Hunter’s defense team, which objected.

Things fell apart from there.

Blame the Prosecutors

There’s good reason to believe the Team Hunter surprise about immunity was legit. What defense lawyer allows his client to sign a plea deal—to negotiate away any leverage—knowing that even tougher charges may still come? Whatever its public statements, Mr. Weiss’s office had clearly led Hunter’s team to believe the probe was wrapped up. Judge Noreika’s demand for legal clarity looks to have exposed a wink-nod deal.

Justice Department has been caught. It has no good answers because it was playing games and never thought it’d be asked any questions, continues Ms. Strassel.

The Hunter deal was always premised on the notion that nobody would see the sausage. The Justice Department would release the bare bones of an agreement, the press would infuse it with credibility, and the judge would sign off. It didn’t count on two whistleblowers providing evidence of political favoritism, or on a court that questions why prosecutors are acting as a Hunter favor factory.

Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)

FARA is a long-ignored law dating to 1938, informs the WSJ. Special counsel Mueller brought it out of mothballs in an attempt to pry information out of Donald Trump’s associates. Mueller used FARA to prosecute Trump associates who were mostly accused of lying about their work on behalf of foreign governments.

As long as FARA was targeting people in the Trump orbit, Democrats cheered these prosecutions. They weren’t even fazed when a federal jury acquitted Mr. Craig on FARA-related charges that (the WSJ) and others believe should never have been brought.

Merritt Garland has proved to be much worse than Andrew McCarthy thought he would be. In NRO, McCarthy stresses Garland’s failure to appoint a special counsel in the Biden corruption probe shows how worried the administration is about the president’s centrality to that probe — which, of course, is about how his family cashes in on his political power, compromising him and thus our country through bribes from foreign actors connected to corrupt and anti-American regimes.

The story here is even more remarkable for being untold, adds Holman Jenkins in the WSJ:

In short order, the Hunter mess has managed to taint our intelligence community, the FBI, IRS and now the Justice Department. If news sense is not completely dulled by neurotic compliance, some editors must also be starting to see the outlines of another approaching debacle, in which skeletons from the Biden closet elect Mr. Trump.