Hunter Biden plea: Dick Durbin calls offenses ‘serious’ while defending deal
Emily Jacobs
Video Embed
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) believes the deal prosecutors reached with Hunter Biden on federal tax and gun charges “is defensible,” he told the Washington Examiner on Wednesday.
The Justice Department wrote in a court filing Tuesday that President Joe Biden’s son had agreed to plead guilty to two counts of “willful failure to pay” his federal income taxes and would enter a “pretrial diversion agreement” concerning possession of a firearm “by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.”
BIDEN’S CLIMATE AGENDA DREAMS COLLIDE WITH MILITARY REALITIES
“Well, after five years of investigation by a Trump U.S. attorney, I have to believe that what they’ve come up with is defensible,” Durbin told the Washington Examiner outside the Senate chamber on Wednesday. “In light of past sentencing procedures, I don’t practice law in that area, so I don’t know for sure, but misdemeanor tax offenses are serious. But I’m sure the people who are on the other side wish they were even more so.”
Asked if the younger Biden plea deal could be a liability for his father in the 2024 general election, the No. 2 Senate Democrat replied, “Hunter has been a challenge for his father even when he ran last time. Now that this case has been at least resolved from the prosecutor’s point of view, I think he is less of a liability.”
U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware brought the limited charges amid whistleblower allegations that the Justice Department investigation was politicized and as the president insists his son has done nothing wrong. Weiss’s office put out a press release on Tuesday, noting that Hunter Biden had been hit with “two misdemeanor tax offenses and a felony firearm offense.” The Delaware federal prosecutor said that “the investigation is ongoing.”
Republicans have long contended the younger Biden’s lucrative business dealings in Ukraine and China indicate he may have committed crimes related to foreign lobbying or money laundering, but they say the new charges fall far short of that.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
A number of GOP lawmakers have argued the plea deal serves as proof of a two-tiered justice system that targets their side of the aisle.
“I’m sure critics and skeptics are living in that space,” Durbin said Wednesday of Republicans angry about the agreement. “But, you know, the fact is, it was a Trump U.S. attorney. He was left free to come to the conclusions he wished.”