Hunter Biden to Plead Guilty to Federal Charges (Updated)
Breaking news.
So reports CNN: Hunter Biden to plead guilty to three federal charges.
There are no details at this time.
I am not in the least shocked by this news.
I do expect that right-wing media is going to be over the moon.
UPDATE: Here’s the skinny via WaPo: Hunter Biden reaches deal to plead guilty in tax, gun case.
President Biden’s son Hunter has reached a tentative agreement with federal prosecutors to plead guilty to two minor tax crimes and admit to the facts of a gun charge under terms that would likely keep him out of jail, according to court papers filed Tuesday.
Any proposed plea deal would have to be approved by a federal judge. Both the prosecutors and the defense counsel have requested a court hearing at which Hunter Biden, 53, can enter his plea.
The agreement caps an investigation that was opened in 2018 during the Trump administration, and has generated intense interest and criticism since 2020 from Republican politicians who accused the Biden administration of reluctance to pursue the case. The terms of the proposed deal — negotiated with Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, a holdover from President Donald Trump’s administration — are likely to face similar scrutiny.
[..]
In all, prosecutors will recommend two years of probation and diversion conditions, these people said. If Biden successfully meets the conditions of the diversion program, the gun charge would be removed from his record at the end of that period, the people familiar with the plea deal said.
So lying on a gun permit application and two misdemeanor tax charges?
And this is the sum total of years of yelling about his laptop?
Please name one other person in history charged with lying about drugs on their gun permit application?
Hilarious.
Bet he does zero time.
@Daryl: The only other one I can think of recently is the mother of the 6 year old in Virginia who shot his teacher, I think they nailed her on lying about being on drugs on her gun application.
@Daryl:
To be clear, chances are they were threatening more severe charges as this is what his attorneys were able to narrow it down to in return for a plea.
The question of whether or not the Feds had the evidence to convict on those other charges is open to debate. The challenge of having a criminal legal system that is more or less reliant on plea bargains to function means that overcharging is an accepted part of the system.
This is a good outcome for conservative media as this will allow them to both speculate on what charges he would have been indicted on AND also steam about “sweetheart” plea deals (even though this type of treatment is pretty standard in the Federal Courts).
@Daryl:
I wish I had a ready source for the amount of time and money that fiscal conservative Republicans have spent investigation H. Biden.
Meanwhile Trump admits to criminal obstruction on live TV.
I can’t stop laughing.
@Daryl:
Almost certainly…
From the article:
The two misdemeanors will most likely involve hefty fines.
A pre-trial diversion means that he’s going into some form of a regulated intervention program. Provided he stays clean and successfully completes that program, then from a public records perspective, it’s as if he was never charged. These types of programs are quite common and in general a good thing.
Also, pre-trial diversion programs are not a “get out of jail free” option. There are stipulations and if he doesn’t complete them, then usually one ends up with the conviction in question. Additionally, even if you successfully complete the program, if you get charged for the same crime in the future, the fact you already went through a diversion program can be used against you (and prevent you from getting a second bite at the diversion apple).
@Matt Bernius:
They are going to blather on no matter what.
Pretty hard to see this as a win for the people who have been talking about Impeaching Biden for all the criming he did with his criminal mastermind son.
@Matt Bernius:
Yes – a similar program kept a DUI off my record, with the stipulation that I cannot reoffend for ten years or the charge does become part of the record.
I disagree. They were hoping to ride this hobby horse right through the election. Now it’s going to fall off the front pages of even RWNJ sites. Democrats had already foiled their plans by not giving even a slight shit about Hunter Biden, and now they’re faced with a rational plea agreement that amounts to very little. Hard to ‘both sides’ it when ‘our guy’ says, in effect, yep, you got me, I surrender to the criminal justice system.
@Michael Reynolds:
They will certainly try to continue with the lying and smearing-by-association of the President, but yeah, after all the years of inane blather about “Hunter Biden’s laptop,” what’s essentially a nothingburger of charges will completely deflate that balloon.
The Washington Post is reporting he’ll get two years probation and when he completes the rehab program they’ll wipe the gun charge.
@Michael Reynolds: Of course they will be over the moon.
1. They can talk about Hunter being a criminal.
2. They can therefore talk less about Trump being a criminal.
3. Major bonus: they can gripe that this isn’t enough, it shows more Biden corruption, and still speculate about the laptop.
All of which is essentially free programming.
You have watched right-wing cable news before, haven’t you 😉
Too bad about the pre-trial diversion program. I was looking forward to the NRA defending Hunter for being charged with an unconstitutional anti-gun law.
@Steven L. Taylor: Sure, they’re going to do all of that, but they’d do that anyway.
The difference now is they will only be talking to each other, because anyone else will have stopped paying attention. Before this morning, there was at least some question as to what Hunter had done, a small piece of doubt that could be inserted into the minds of those not wholly in the bubble. Now that is gone. Hunter has been charged with something, and the something is a couple misdemeanors and a felony that gets wiped after he gets drug treatment.
It’s not a complete nothingburger for Hunter, but it is in the context of all the shit the right has been flinging since the 2020 campaign. Whatever power that had is now completely gone.
@Steven L. Taylor:
FWIW that’s exactly my take.
@Mikey:
I suppose a lot rides on what power one thought it had in the first place, and for whom.
I mean, I have never had a lot of belief that the story had much power to begin with, except in rw circles, and this will not stop the speculative power of “Big Guy” references, laptop theories, and the like.
The whole Hunter Biden laptop Burisma five million for the big guy never made any sense. Why would it slow down because it still doesn’t make any sense?
ETA – That was weird. I had to change my handle and email to get comments to post. I knew I’d occasionally forget. As I hit Post I realized I had typed my old handle and email. It posted cleanly anyway, with my new handle. WordPress giveth and WordPress taketh away.
In a country where a Presidential election can be decided by a few thousand votes spread across the right states, it had a lot of power. All it needed to do was plant a seed of doubt in the right number of minds, get enough people to just sit it out, and the election is swung.
Now the power to plant that seed is basically gone. The RWNJs will of course continue the usual nonsense, but everyone else will have stopped paying attention.
The RWNJ’s seem to have settled on the “sweetheart deal” talking point.
The GOP, Ron DeSantis, Marsha Blackburn, Tom Cotton, Pompeo, Stephen Miller…all using the very same simple slogan.
Not only are they not serious people, they are not even a little bit creative.
@Steven L. Taylor:
Indeed, they will hit those three points over and over again. But, they were doing that already, so this plea is new energy for a long running topic.
On the other hand, now there is substance where there was only speculation before. In ancient times, cartographers drew sea monsters in the parts of the maps that were uncharted. Human nature is to imagine the worst where there are big unknowns. The federal criminality of Hunter Biden is now known. The right wing may be unhappy with that, but it will be harder now to conjure up horrifying beasties now that there are charges.
And as Michael notes, Hunter is facing his consequences whereas Trump refuses to admit anything. That’s a case study in variable accountability to any honest broker, recognizing there are very few honest brokers remaining in the GOP and right wing media.
The right wing is now either a cult or cult adjacent. They just know, their cult leader told them so, that Hunter committed horrible crimes worthy of life in prison, only because he cant legally be sentenced to torture then being burned at the stake. These charges will only”prove” they were right about Hunter being a criminal but will also “prove” the DOJ is too lenient on Democrats. Hunter will remain an issue as long as Biden is in office. As soon as he is out they will drop it, just like they did with Lois Lerner.
Steve
@Daryl:
Not serious people:
Ha, reminds me of a recently concluded TV show.
Non-creativity:
Maybe someone could have come up with something more creative, I grant that. But everyone using the same phrase is deliberate and probably a good idea.
Watch for a spike in usage of that in internet comments, Twitter, etc. If you do not notice it used much, look for a replacement phrase. It’s a basic principle of messaging.
If you care, the Trumpkins over at Lucianne.com, the premier hangout for Trump fanatics, are enraged that Hunter got a slap on the wrist while Trump is being so viciously and unfairly persecuted.
@gVOR10:
Tested the old handle, it went into moderation
ETA: I hope that didn’t mess up the new handle.
It should be noted the investigation into Hunter Biden was initiated in 2018, while Trump was President, and overseen by Trump-appointed US Attorney David Weiss. When Joe Biden won the election, he chose to leave Weiss in place to continue the investigation, rather than appointing a new US Attorney for that district. AG Garland also did not involve himself in the investigation at all (beyond providing Weiss whatever resources he needed to continue the investigation).
Just a few headlines on mediaite.com
Fox News’ Jonathan Turley Rips Hunter Biden Plea Deal for Not Addressing Corruption Claims: ‘Ticketed the Getaway Driver After a Bank Robbery’
Congressional Republicans Livid About Hunter Biden Plea Deal: ‘Slap on the Wrist’
Trump Lashes Out at ‘Corrupt’ DOJ Over Hunter Biden Plea Deal: They Gave Him ‘A Mere Traffic Ticket!’
If you go back to the anti-Clinton smear industry from the 1990s and follow it through the decades–the Swift-Boating of Kerry, Obama-nation, Benghazi, Hillary’s emails–it does seem like they’ve been getting worse at it. I’m not saying it doesn’t achieve the objectives of everyone involved. To some extent it’s always been about the grift more than winning elections. But with the Hunter Biden stuff, I truly think they’ve lost the ability to discern how little the broader public gives a shit. In the past, they were nothing if not good storytellers. Now they’re increasingly reminding me of Trekkies citing episode and verse while the casual observer can’t make heads or tails of what they’re on about.
These people will never pipe down until they get as good as they give. I live amongst them…they only respect confrontation and force. This is why Trump can’t rally a mob any more to defend him. They know that after the police finish whipping their ass…they are going to get charged and go jail.
Simple diplomacy doesn’t work when the only thing the other party wants is to see you lose..AND they are willing lose themselves to achieve that outcome.
This is an unfortunate virus in the human psyche but we have to live with the people here and not the people we wish were here. ‘Weaponize’ the DOJ, IRS, and the FCC against these clowns. Until the air is taken out of the RW wurtziler, AND counter messaging is conducted in these rural areas… the frustration and anger will continue to grow until it infects the younger generation.
Then there will be a real problem to deal with
@CSK: I don’t care, do U?
@Kylopod:
Lol
@Kurtz:
Hence the term, “talking point.”
Thanks.
@just nutha:
Not really, but I do think it’s interesting how delusional these people are. They believe that Trump vanquished that Commie loser Bret Baier last night.
@Daryl:
Don’t worry. I’m sure the phantom whistleblower and the missing Biden confession tapes congressional Republicans keep promising will show up any day now lol
I’m really looking forward to Trump complaining that he hasn’t been offered such a sweetheart plea deal for his crimes. It will be wonderful.
Former president and GOP frontrunner Donald Trump as opposed to a sitting president’s child who has zero role in governing our country, is, of course, a raging false equivalency.
Trump’s core supporters won’t care, of course, but in the margins where the election will be decided, I think it will matter.
People who trend Republican but are sick of Trump’s endless soap opera will probably notice the complete absence of drama in the Biden camp. There are signs that the recent Trump indictment is hurting him among some Republicans.
People at either end of the spectrum make, by far, the most noise. Surely there are voters out there that are the modern equivalent of Rockefeller Republicans who are a silent minority within the GOP.
@Gustopher:
But that would involve Trump either admitting or acknowledging guilt, and he says he’s done nothing wrong.
@Kylopod:
Mar-a-lago, when the walls fell. Trump, his bathroom full.
@anjin-san:
Rockefeller Republicans no longer exist. Most of us have been voting Democratic starting with Obama. Because the Republicans have been taken over by the heirs of George Wallace.
@CSK: True enuf! I was just riffing off Melania.
ETA: I do feel bad for Baier having to make Trump look credible for an hour, tho.
@Scott:
I absolutely agree. People are always going to conceptualize the GOP as being divided into a “centrist” and “conservative” wing, but these can mean radically different things at different times. The original Rockefeller wing didn’t even really survive the ’80s, and thereafter when people used the term “moderate Republican,” they meant the relatively more moderate portion of the conservative wing. Perhaps nothing illustrates this better than when President Ford chose Bob Dole as his running mate in the 1976 election instead of the sitting vp, Nelson Rockefeller. The choice of Dole was meant to appease the Reaganites in the party. Later, Dole would come to be seen as a moderate. And a lot of the Never-Trumpers today are people who practically worship Saint Ronnie. If you called any of them a liberal Republican, they’d look at you like you were insane. Yet “liberal Republican” was a fairly common phrase back in the day. It didn’t mean “liberal for a Republican,” it meant they were actual liberals, and that was normal because some Republicans were liberals. There hasn’t been anything remotely like that in decades.
@just nutha:
I don’t feel bad for him in the slightest. He made his bed. The only significance to me is that it suggests Fox is looking for an off-ramp. (Again.)
@Scott:
You don’t think that there are enough registered Republicans that Biden could peel off to make a real difference in an election with a razor-thin deciding margin?
I’ve been a Democrat for a long time now, but I would be hesitant to make generalizations about Democratic voters as a whole based on my own experience and observation.
“Rockefeller Republicans” is probably a bad way of describing the voter I am thinking about. My father was a Rockefeller Republican in the 60s & 70s, and he left the GOP over the Iraq war and general incompetence on the part of GW Bush.
I can’t help but doubt that every likely voter who is registered Republican is a MAGA fanatic. Social and traditional media amplify the extremes and tend to ignore what’s left. What’s left might not be all that much, but it might be enough to decide an election, just as a subset of black voters staying home might sink Biden.
@anjin-san: I’m not sure that party affiliation actually means anything anymore. Based on Gallup’s polling (https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx), the country is about 30 R, 30 D, and 40 I. And that’s based on feelings more than actual registration. In Texas, you don’t register for a party at voter registration. You get affiliated based on the primary you vote in and that only lasts a year. So hard data is hard to come by.
@anjin-san: GW, 1st term, was the last Republican I voted for President. Might have voted for McCain but Palin drove me the opposite direction. Locally, it really ends up personality dependent.
@Kylopod:
I wonder if the reason is a little of the “boy who cried wolf”. The patter is repeating itself without any real payoff. I remember when the Hillary email thing came up, most of the people I knew were either really concerned about it or more “Again? That trick never works”. Fast Froward to Hunter Biden and most people I know were like, “Fine, investigate him and see what sticks” But no one took it all that seriously all that seriously.
Even people I know who consider themselves independents were like, “another BS sandal?” Even some Republicans are seeing the pattern. Especially with all the, “my dog ate my witnesses\evidence” excuses coming our of the House “investigations”.
Looks like it only took 33 years for some people to get a clue.
@Rick DeMent:
That could be part of it, but I just think the narratives themselves have started to sound less compelling on their own terms. I don’t think Hunter’s laptop would have been any more resonant as a scandal 10 or 20 years ago. In part it’s supposed to be a tale of nepotism. You could argue that Dems would be able to counter it by talking Trump and Javanka. But hypocrisy doesn’t always stop a political attack from being effective. We’ve seen that plenty of times before. The thing is, though, Republicans aren’t really stressing the nepotism angle. What they seem to be doing is to trying to use Hunter’s malfeasances as a kind of springboard to validate their elaborate conspiracy theories about Papa Joe. Those theories are automatically convincing to the audience of right-wing media, but they aren’t interesting or even coherent to anyone else, and the Hunter connection does nothing to make them more interesting. And everything in the right-wing world has become so meme-ified, it all just sounds like someone rattling off a bunch of labels that it’s hard just to make sense of, let alone care about: bada-bada-bada Hunter bada-bada-bada laptop bada-bada-bada Burisma….. There’s no story anymore, just a drunken midnight rant.
At the moment Elon Musk’s Twitter kind of doesn’t seem to GAF. In fact, Roger Stone is trending because he did worse and got nothing but a fine. And now Ivanka is trending, taking Roger’s #2 slot, with Titanic holding onto the top spot. Republicans are getting nothing from this. It’s deflating. To the extent they whine about a slap on the wrist, that’s a loser’s complaint. They’re wandering without a story line.
@anjin-san:
Speaking only for myself, I would say “no.” But I will agree on not making similar-type evaluation about Democrats because the label covers a much wider array of voters, many, if not most, of whom are not as liberal/progressive as Democrats at large imagine themselves to be. For better or worse, the Democrat label probably embraces most, if not all, of the actual “centrists” (in the global perspective–the US as a nation seems, in my mind anyway, to lean conservative/capitalist/corporatist with liberals being a slice of the total and progressives an even smaller slice).
@anjin-san: I wouldn’t say “MAGA fanatics” either. But I also wouldn’t agree that their primary disagreement with Trump and Trumpishness (and Republican policy under Trump) is that they reject the direction he takes the country. They dislike that he’s vulgar and plebian. (IOW, they’re probably mostly fine with the racism and such–and definitely the economic policy–but would prefer a return to dog whistling so that it’s not so much in their faces.)
I’ve had enough…Impeach Hunter!!!
@Stormy Dragon: Beautiful. If I could, ten more thumbs up.