Ex-tax official: 'Throw Hunter’s plea deal in the trash'

FPI / June 30, 2023

Following testimony by two IRS whistleblowers that a more serious criminal tax case against Hunter Biden was sabotaged by the Department of Justice, Congress members and legal analysts are calling on the federal judge in the case to reject a plea deal that would spare Joe Biden’s son prison time.

IRS supervisory agent Gary Shapley and another whistleblower said in congressional testimony that the DOJ blocked search warrants, interviews, and more serious criminal charges in the Hunter Biden case.

Eileen O’Connor, the former head of the DOJ’s tax division, wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the interference Shapley’s team faced in its investigation was unprecedented and it was appropriate to “throw Hunter Biden’s plea deal in the trash.”

"Judges can reject plea agreements. That would be an appropriate disposition here,” O’Connor wrote on Tuesday. “And Congress, in fulfillment of its oversight obligation, must learn and share with the American public what evidence the IRS gathered, what evidence its agents weren’t permitted to obtain, and what charges might have been brought if they had.”

In an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast, Shapley said that career agents, career prosecutors, the DOJ tax division, and lead U.S. Attorney David Weiss supported charging Hunter Biden with felonies alleging tax evasion and avoidance back to 2014 totaling $2.2 million, including failing to pay taxes on $400,000 in income he got from the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings.

“I don't understand how any judge could bless this plea agreement now that all of this evidence of obstruction and DOJ and FBI wrongdoing has surfaced,” Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson told Just the News. “So I hope this judge does reject this, and then insists and demands on an honest investigation and an honest prosecution as well.”

Hunter Biden, 53, struck a deal with Weiss to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax evasion charges from 2017-18 and to enter a probation program that would result in a federal felony gun charge to be dismissed. He is scheduled to appear July 26 in federal court in Delaware before U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika, an appointee of President Donald Trump.

Harvard law professor emeritus Alan Dershowitz said there is good reason for Noreika to set aside the plea deal and seek to investigate the whistleblower allegations. He said it was concerning that the whistleblowers’ testimony directly conflicts with Attorney General Merrick Garland’s testimony that there was no interference in the investigation.

“If I were the judge on the Hunter Biden case, I would refuse to accept the plea bargain unless and until Garland and Weiss testify,” Dershowitz told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday. “What they've said is utterly incompatible.”

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