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CNN legal analyst praises judge who exposed Hunter plea deal charade: Only person in court who did their job

July 27, 2023 | | Print Article

CNN legal analyst Elie Honig on Thursday showered praise on the Trump-appointed judge who’d rejected Hunter Biden’s plea deal a day earlier.

He offered the praise while speaking on “CNN This Morning” about how the plea deal was rejected because of a dispute between Hunter’s attorneys and federal prosecutors.

Listen:

Honig explained that there’s a statement of facts and that Hunter’s attorneys had tried to earn him immunity for EVERYTHING in the statement, including crimes that weren’t even supposed to be mixed in with the plea agreement. Recall that the plea agreement was only supposed to pertain to tax charges.

“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,” Honig said.

“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,” he added.

So what other crimes might Hunter face future prosecution for? Possibly his violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. For years he essentially functioned as an unofficial lobbyist for the Obama administration.

When asked about the chance of Hunter being charged with violating FARA, Honig then showered praise on Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee.

“I think the judge is the only person in the courtroom yesterday who did her job properly,” he said.

“I think [Biden’s team was] hoping he would be covered. 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,” he added.

He’s not the only one to praise Noreika. Over on Twitter, she’s also been showered with praise from conservatives thrilled to see Hunter finally get a taste of what he deserves.

Look:

Even Andrew Weissmann, the MSNBC contributor who used to be former special counsel Robert Mueller’s “pitbull,” had some praise for the judge.

“The Hunter Biden plea is going to go forward after the parties retool the agreement to fix the issue flagged by the smart judge. But this kerfuffle was avoidable if the parties had done their job better,” he tweeted Thursday morning, (emphasis added.)

In another tweet, he added that Judge Noreika “was exceptional” and “is not a biased ‘Trump’ judge.”

“She asked cogent questions, flagging real issues in the agreements and an important separation of powers issue, which the U.S. conceded they had no precedent for,” he continued.

Look:

Is anybody unhappy about the judge’s ruling? Yes. Hunter and his team, reportedly.

“Hunter Biden’s legal team was angry and dejected late Wednesday after a plea deal to help the president’s son avoid prison blew up in a chaotic, three-hour court hearing,” Axios reported.

“Hours after the hearing, Biden’s team was still fuming, suggesting that Noreika seemed intent on not letting the plea agreement go forward after deliberately questioning lawyers on both sides about the terms of the deal,” according to Axios.

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Vivek Saxena
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