Hunter Biden pleads not guilty to two tax charges after court chaos around deal with prosecutors

Federal prosecutors and attorneys for President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden have settled on a deal for the lawyer and lobbyist turned artist to plead guilty to tax misdemeanour charges and enter into a diversion programme on a gun-related charge, but the judge overseeing the case wants more information before accepting the deal.

US District Judge Maryellen Noreika has ordered attorneys from both sides to file briefs with the court on a provision of the agreement which she had questioned because it raised separation of powers concerns, or modify the agreement to exclude the provision she questioned.

The agreement, which she had reviewed, reportedly said that she would be responsible for deciding if Mr Biden was ever in breach of the agreement. She suggested that such a role would be improper for her because it is the executive branch, through prosecutors, which makes charging decision.

Because Mr Biden had to enter a plea at his court appearance, he has pleaded not guilty while attorneys from both sides confer to make the agreement comply with the judge’s concerns. He will be able to enter a guilty plea when his attorneys and prosecutors have settled on language for a deal.

Earlier in the hearing, the deal appeared to fall apart completely when the judge overseeing a plea hearing questioned whether the deal would preclude the government from pursuing other charges against him.

According to multiple reports, Mr Biden’s plea agreement will cover tax years 2014 through 2019 and any offences he could be charged with for violating tax, gun possession or drug laws. It will not cover any other offences, some of which may be under investigation by the Department of Justice.

US District Judge Maryellen Noreika had ordered Mr Biden’s lawyers and prosecutors to confer further after Mr Biden said he would not accept the agreement if it did not provide that the government could not charge him for any crimes currently known to prosecutors if he successfully completes the terms of the deal.

Prosecutors had agreed to ask Judge Noreika to impose a term of probation on Mr Biden for not having paid taxes on time in 2017 and 2018.

Mr Biden was also expected to enter into a diversion deal under which he’d plead guilty to charges that he’d lied on a gun background check form when he said he wasn’t a user of drugs when he bought a pistol during that same time period, but would withdraw the plea after completing the terms of the diversion agreement, which often requires community service and continued sobriety verified by drug tests.

During the court hearing, he told Judge Noreika that he’d been sober since 2019 but had been in and out of drug treatment for roughly two decades.

The sticking point in the proceedings appeared when the judge asked prosecutors and defence counsel whether they understood the hearing to conclude any criminal proceedings against Mr Biden, and when prosecutors said that was not their understanding, she ordered prosecutors and defence counsel for the president’s son to confer on whether they still have an agreement.

The chaos at the Wilmington, Delaware federal courthouse comes after years of attempts by Republicans to weaponise Hunter Biden’s private business affairs and substance abuse troubles against his father dating back to mid-2019, when then-president Donald Trump tried to blackmail Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky into announcing sham investigations into Hunter Biden and his father, who was then contemplating a run for president in the 2020 election.

Republicans have spent years alleging that Hunter Biden’s work for a Ukrainian energy company, Burisma, was the reason Mr Biden carried out Obama administration policy as vice president when he pushed Ukraine’s then-president, Petro Poroshenko, to oust a prosecutor whose firing had been demanded by the US, EU, IMF and other entities that were backing financial aid for Ukraine.

The false allegations were what motivated then-president Donald Trump to attempt to blackmail Mr Poroshenko’s successor, Volodymyr Zelensky, into announcing sham investigations into the Bidens, leading to Mr Trump’s first of two impeachment trials.

Although Republicans have claimed that Mr Biden is getting an overly lenient deal because of political favouritism, the White House has denied that President Biden has taken any steps to interfere with the probe, which is being conducted by a Trump appointee who was asked to stay on to keep a degree of separation between the White House and the probe of the president’s son.

White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre addressed the Wednesday hearing at the top of the daily press briefing with a brief statement.

She told reporters: “Hunter Biden is a private citizen, and this was a personal matter for him. As we have said the President, the First Lady, they love their son, and they support him as he continues to rebuild his life. This case was handled independently, as all of you know, by the Justice Department under the leadership of a prosecutor appointed by the former president, President Trump”.

She referred further questions to Hunter Biden’s representatives.