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Post by Admin on Jul 21, 2023 7:20:36 GMT
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley released an unclassified document Thursday that Republicans claim is significant in their investigation of Hunter Biden as they delve into the financial affairs of the president and his son, and revive previously debunked claims of wrongdoing.
Grassley of Iowa has been working alongside House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., as Republicans deepen their probe of President Joe Biden and his son, Hunter, ahead of the 2024 election. Comer had issued a subpoena for the document from the FBI.
While lawmakers on the Oversight Committee have already been able to partly review the information, this is the first time the full document — which contains raw, unverified information — is being made public. Called an FD-1023 form, it involves claims a confidential informant made in 2020 about Hunter Biden’s alleged business dealings when he served on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Top Republicans have acknowledged they cannot confirm whether the information is true.
“The American people can now read this document for themselves,” Grassley said.
The document adds to information that had widely aired during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial, which involved Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani’s efforts to dig up dirt on the Bidens ahead of the 2020 election. It was also the subject of a subsequent Department of Justice review that Trump’s Attorney General William Barr launched in 2020 and closed later that year.
In the four-page document, the confidential informant claims to have been involved in various meetings some years earlier, in 2015 or 2016, with officials from the Burisma energy company looking to do business in the United States. The informant claims being told by Burisma officials about their relationship and dealings with Hunter Biden.
One company official said they kept Hunter Biden on the Burisma board because they believed through “his dad” it could protect them from all kinds of problems, the informant claimed.
In another instance, a top company official suggested payment of $5 million to each of the Bidens as the company sought to have Ukraine’s prosecutor general at the time, Viktor Shokin, removed from office, according to the document.
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Post by Admin on Jul 26, 2023 23:53:33 GMT
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — The plea deal in Hunter Biden’s criminal case unraveled during a court hearing Wednesday after a federal judge raised concerns about the terms of the agreement that has infuriated Republicans who believe the president’s son is getting preferential treatment.
Hunter Biden was charged last month with two misdemeanor crimes of failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes from over $1.5 million in income in both 2017 and 2018 and had been expected to plead guilty Wednesday after he made an agreement with prosecutors, who were planning to recommend two years of probation. Prosecutors said Wednesday Hunter Biden remains under active investigation, but would not reveal details.
U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, raised multiple concerns about the specifics of the deal and her role in the proceedings. The plan also included an agreement on a separate gun charge — Biden has been accused of possessing a firearm in 2018 as a drug user. As long as he adhered to the terms of his agreement, the gun case was to be wiped from his record. Otherwise, the felony charge carries 10 years in prison.
The overlapping agreements created confusion for the judge, who said the lawyers needed to untangle technical issues — including over her role in enforcing the gun agreement — before moving forward.
“It seems to me like you are saying ‘just rubber stamp the agreement, Your Honor.’ … This seems to me to be form over substance,” she said. She asked defense lawyers and prosecutors to explain why she should accept the deal. In the meantime, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to the tax charges.
The collapsed proceedings were a surprising development in the yearslong investigation, and a resolution that had been carefully negotiated over several weeks and included a lengthy back-and-forth between Justice Department prosecutors and Biden’s attorneys.
The plea deal was meant to clear the air for Hunter Biden and avert a trial that would have generated weeks or months of distracting headlines. But the politics remain as messy as ever, with Republicans insisting he got a sweetheart deal and the Justice Department pressing ahead on investigations into Trump, the GOP’s 2024 presidential primary front-runner.
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2023 13:28:34 GMT
The breakdown of the Hunter Biden plea deal may contain silver linings for both the defendant and for the U.S. Department of Justice.
Federal District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika tanked the deal today, after what was expected to be a straightforward hearing turned into three hours of drama where the plea deal was off, on, and finally postponed altogether.
Judge Noreika initially expressed concern over the scope of the plea agreement, arising out of the DOJ’s insistence that the investigation was still ongoing—despite reaching a plea agreement with Hunter Biden after five years worth of investigation.
The Biden defense team naturally took the position that the plea bargain should include protection against any other prosecutions. When the DOJ balked, the deal was temporarily off, or as one Biden attorney put it: “null and void.”
It’s understandable that people will wonder how it is possible that, in such a high profile case, the full scope of the agreement was not completely hammered out beforehand. But the reality is there was something to gain for both sides by leaving it vague.
If the judge had accepted the plea as is and then the DOJ (whether under Attorney General Merrick Garland or, perhaps, a future Republican AG) later tried to bring additional charges, then Biden would have had a good argument that the government was barred by the plea agreement from doing so.
Plea bargains are essentially contracts between the prosecution and the defense, and ambiguity in contracts are usually construed against the party who drafted the contract. Subject to argument, of course, that ambiguity would likely be construed against the party with more bargaining power—the DOJ.
So if the plea had gone through, Biden’s team could have reasoned that any ambiguous statements about an “ongoing investigation” presented lesser exposure, given that they could counter later charges under a theory that the government was breaching its plea agreement.
Biden’s team also may have taken into account the likelihood of additional charges—such as violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act—arising after almost five years worth of investigation producing no charges. And that’s not even taking into account the incredibly picked-over and tainted evidence from the infamous “Hunter Biden laptop,” that appears to have been handled and tampered with by legions of people—making it useless from an evidentiary standpoint.
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Post by Admin on Jul 30, 2023 22:09:49 GMT
Lisa 'Kennedy' Montgomery sounds the alarm on revelations President Biden may have spoken to Hunter Biden about his business dealings on 'Fox News Saturday Night.'
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Post by Admin on Aug 1, 2023 11:11:46 GMT
A former Hunter Biden associate told Congress that Hunter sold "the illusion of access" by putting his father on speaker phone with business partners, but that then-Vice President Biden never talked shop, according to Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) and a source familiar with the testimony.
Why it matters: Top Republicans called for an impeachment inquiry into President Biden ahead of Devon Archer's closed-door testimony Monday — and suggested that he boosted their case — while Democrats said there was no smoking gun tying Biden to his son's business entanglements.
Zoom in: Archer, who was convicted of fraud in 2018, testified that Hunter put his father on the phone with friends and business associates roughly 20 times over 10 years.
But Archer "repeated over and over and over again that President Biden never discussed any business dealings or interests with Hunter or anyone else," Goldman told reporters after the hours-long transcribed interview. Republicans cast doubt on the claim that Biden simply exchanged "niceties" during the phone calls. They also focused on Archer's testimony that embattled Ukrainian gas company Burisma wanted Hunter on its board for his family's "brand." The intrigue: Archer testified that he knew nothing about the alleged $5 million bribes paid to the Biden family from a Burisma executive, as was claimed in an unverified FBI document touted and released by Republicans, according to one source familiar.
Archer also testified that Burisma believed efforts to oust Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin were bad for the Ukrainian energy company, according to Goldman. This runs counter to Republicans' suggestions over the years that Biden pushed for Shokin's firing — which was official U.S. policy backed by the European Union and International Monetary Fund — to benefit Hunter. Between the lines: The interview did raise questions about Hunter's efforts to leverage the Biden family name.
House Oversight Chair James Comer's (R-Ky.) said the testimony "raises concerns that Hunter Biden was in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act." "To the extent that Hunter Biden used his father ... in any furtherance of any of his business dealings, it was not in consultation or collaboration with his father," Goldman told Axios. "Did he want to have the appearance of influence to the Burisma executives? Yes, I think he did. And that was ill-advised," Goldman added. Still, Goldman defended Hunter as a private citizen and described the frequent phone calls as father and son checking on each other after the death of Beau Biden, Hunter's brother. What to watch: Some Republicans are sure to attack Joe Biden for speaking with Hunter's business associates while vice president, given how definitively Biden has publicly distanced himself from his son's and brother James' businesses.
"I have never discussed, with my son or my brother or anyone else, anything having to do with their businesses," Biden said in 2019. "Devon Archer's testimony today confirms Joe Biden lied to the American people when he said he had no knowledge about his son's business dealings and was not involved," Comer said in a statement. "[N]ow that we have proof that Joe Biden is on record lying, that is a very, very big deal in regards to impeachment inquiry," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who was not in the hearing, told Axios. Greene acknowledged, however, that it would be difficult to persuade some of her colleagues to get on board with an impeachment inquiry. The bottom line: "We are aware that all sides are claiming victory following Mr. Archer's voluntary interview today," Matthew Schwartz, counsel to Devon Archer, said in a statement.
"But all Devon Archer did was exactly what we said he would: show up and answer the questions put to him honestly and completely."
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