Hunter Biden’s Attorney Defends Plea Deal, Says Investigation Was Thorough

Hunter Biden’s Attorney Defends Plea Deal, Says Investigation Was Thorough
Vice-President Joe Biden and sons Hunter Biden (L) and Beau Biden walk in the Inaugural Parade in Washington Jan. 20, 2009. David McNew/Getty Images
Ryan Morgan
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Chris Clark, an attorney who represented Hunter Biden in a recent criminal investigation, is insisting that prosecutors were thorough and that the case against the Democratic president’s son didn’t end with an overly lenient plea deal.

On Tuesday, Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss notified the U.S. District Court that Biden intended to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts for willful failure to pay his taxes for two years. Weiss said Biden also agreed to enter a pretrial diversion agreement for obtaining a firearm at a time that he was actively using or addicted to a controlled substance, which is illegal.

The tax charges each carry a maximum penalty of 12 months in prison. The firearm charge carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, but the pretrial diversion agreement could allow him to avoid a criminal conviction and a related criminal punishment.

Clark joined MSNBC host Katy Tur on Tuesday to discuss the plea agreement. Tur asked Clark to address criticisms from Republican critics, like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), who said the charges Biden was allowed to plead guilty to were minimal and the deal he was allowed to take amounted to “a slap on the wrist.”

“This was a five-year, very diligent investigation pursued by incredibly professional prosecutors, some of whom have been career prosecutors, one of whom at least was appointed by [Republican President Donald Trump],” Clark replied. “No one has ever said that they’re not competent, good, or diligent. I haven’t heard anyone say that. It would be false to say that.”

Weiss became the U.S. Attorney for Delaware in February of 2018 and was appointed to the position by Trump.

“NBC reports at times this was a counterintelligence investigation, that this was an investigation into [Foreign Agents Registration Act] violations, which is how you register to work with a foreign government if you’re a foreign citizen, money laundering,” Tur said. “Again, five years, and what they came up with is two misdemeanor tax counts.”

“That’s the resolution we have, is that Mr. Biden’s going to take responsibility for failing to timely pay his taxes for those two years, and there’s going to be a diversion with regard to this 10-day period that he possessed a gun,” Clark replied.

Republicans Decry ‘Two-Tier’ Justice System

In a Tuesday press statement, the Republican House speaker compared the plea deal Hunter Biden received with the recent 37-count federal indictment against Trump. The former president, who was President Joe Biden’s 2020 general election opponent, is accused of taking national defense information with him after leaving the White House in 2021 and obstructing efforts by federal officials to recover those documents.

“If you are the president’s leading political opponent, the DOJ [Department of Justice] tries to literally put you in jail and give you prison time,“ McCarthy said. ”If you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal.”

Trump, who is the current frontrunner in 2024 Republican presidential primary polling, has also condemned the Hunter Biden plea deal.

“Wow! The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket.’ Our system is BROKEN!” Trump wrote in a post on his Truth social media account on Tuesday.
Trump previously predicted the DOJ would “hit Hunter with something small to make their strike on me look ‘fair.’”

Fairness For Hunter Biden

During the interview, Tur said some reports indicate that Weiss would not seek Hunter Biden’s imprisonment after the plea deal. She asked Clark whether he thinks a federal judge may impose a harsher sentence.

“There are documents that haven’t been publicly released yet. I think people have reported what the prosecutors are asking for,” Clark replied. “We have to wait until the court proceeding happens to know, but I think the judge is going to do what’s fair, and what’s fair is my client gets on with his life.”

As the interview continued, Tur again asked Biden’s lawyer to address McCarthy’s claim that the plea agreement amounted to a “sweetheart deal.”

“You know, I’ve heard Speaker McCarthy say stuff I don’t agree with, there was no basis for what he said, and he’s not right,” Clark replied.

The MSNBC host then asked Clark whether he thought his client was treated fairly. Clark said “that’s a really complicated question” because his client went through a period of his life “that was troubled.”

“I think it’s a very hard question whether I would have been prosecuted for that or not,” Clark added. “And I think I could have been, but I think that’s a hard question, and it’s one I can’t answer.”

Tur then asked Clark whether he thought the investigation into Biden was more intensive because of his connection to the president. Clark replied that he believed the prosecutors tried to be “thorough” and “fair.”

Investigation Ongoing

In a press statement after notifying the Delaware federal district court of the plea deal on Tuesday, Weiss said investigative efforts related to the Biden case are “ongoing.”

The Epoch Times reached out to Clark’s offices for further details about what aspects of the investigation may remain active, but he did not respond by the time this article was published.

The Epoch Times also reached out to Weiss’s office but did not receive any additional comment about the ongoing investigation.

At least one Republican critic of Biden’s plea deal, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), has also said Republican lawmakers would continue to investigate the Biden family.

Comer has been leading efforts in the Republican-controlled House to investigate claims of corruption and influence peddling tied to the Biden family. Last month, Comer described a possible money laundering scheme in which $10 million flowed from private clients, corporations, and foreign governments, to dozens of limited liability companies controlled by members of the Biden family. Comer’s investigative efforts have also unearthed allegations Joe Biden was involved in a foreign bribery scheme.
The Joe Biden bribery allegation could be a possible area of focus for Weiss’s office. Earlier this month, former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr refuted claims he had terminated an investigation into the bribery allegations against the president, saying, “On the contrary, it was sent to Delaware for further investigation.”