CNN’s Elie Honig Praises Judge in Hunter Biden Plea Deal Collapse: ‘The Only Person in the Courtroom Who Did Her Job Properly’

 

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig decried the “failure of lawyering” as he summarized the legal chaos surrounding the collapse of Hunter Biden’s plea deal.

Honig joined CNN This Morning on Thursday to talk about how the plea deal was put on hold when the terms of the agreement came into dispute between Biden’s legal team and federal prosecutors. Honig assigned blame to both parties as he broke down the part of the plea agreement that says Hunter Biden will not be further prosecuted “for anything laid out in the statement of facts.”

If you look at that document, there is a statement of fact. It’s about four pages, and it lays out Hunter Biden’s business history, making millions of dollars, by the way, from Chinese companies and from Ukrainian companies, and his drug use history. Now, this is where the legalese comes in. There’s play on this. DOJ apparently reads that to mean only the tax stuff that’s talked about in the actual text. Hunter Biden’s lawyers said ‘Well, we sort of understood it to mean anything in the periphery and anything that might touch on any of his foreign dealings at all.’ That was the disconnect. And when the judge identified that, she said, you don’t have a deal.

When asked about the possibility of President Joe Biden’s son being charged in the future under the Foreign Agent Registration Act, Honig said, “I think the judge is the only person in the courtroom yesterday who did her job properly.” He then recapped how U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika adjourned the hearing so Hunter Biden’s team and federal prosecutors could reassess whether Biden might be charged for not registering as a foreign agent.

“I think [Biden’s team was] hoping he would be covered,” Honig assessed. “Clearly, they never had a direct conversation about this with prosecutors, which is not good practice by the defense… A plea agreement is your future, and the judge has to do her job there and make sure there is not going to be a dispute down the line about what this means.”

Watch above via CNN.

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