Photo: Getty Images North America
The Hunter Biden plea bargain with the Justice Department on tax evasion and gun charges has many Republicans shouting that he got off easy. But, as News Nation legal contributor Jesse Weber reasoned on 710 WORās Len Berman and Michel Riedel in the Morning program, Bidenās plea bargain fits the case within the context of the law and is not that surprising.
āWhat is surprising to people,ā Weber explained to Berman and Riedel, āis why, after all five years, there was nothing more. There was talk of bribery, there was talk of money laundering, there was talk of conspiracy. Now, we have to remember that David Weiss, who was the lead prosecutor looking into this, was not a Biden guy, was not a Democrat. He was a Trump appointee. And so, the struggle, I think, for a lot of people is, well, if he really didnāt see any other kind of illegal conduct, a Trump-appointed lawyer, thatās maybe where it ends, and I think thatās going to be a hard reality for people.ā
Weber says the stumbling block to the conspiracy claims is that Biden did, ultimately, pay taxes, and the law addressed this issue. āThe thing that you have to remember with these charges is, he failed to file his tax return on time and didnāt pay the appropriate taxes, and sometimes that could be a civil penalty, and he ultimately did pay it back. There was no evidence, at least from what weāre seeing, that there was tax fraud⦠typically, in these cases, you wouldnāt see necessarily jail time. You would see them paying it back, youād see some sort of deal, or you would see some sort of agreement.ā
Ultimately, Weber says the charges Donald Trump is facing are the legal issue the GOP should be concerned about. āObviously, theyāre going to use this as a political football going into 2024, but I donāt know how much itās ultimately going to help them, because I think the bigger situation is whatās happening with Trump, and thatās going to be a real problem⦠The charges that heās facing in Florida, as I always said to you, were the more significant ones, and the ones that are really problematic for the former president.ā
Photo Credit: Getty Images