According to a new report from Politico, attorneys for Hunter Biden may have encouraged prosecutors to enter into a now-defunct plea deal by threatening to put President Joe Biden on the stand as a defense witness in a case brought by his own justice department.
The report is based on a letter purportedly written on Halloween of 2022 by Chris Clark, counsel for Hunter Biden, and provided to Politico by “a person with knowledge of the communications between the Justice Department and Biden’s legal team.” According to Politico, Clark wrote to the U.S. Attorney overseeing the prosecution of Hunter Biden and sharply criticized the apparent leak of information that federal agents believed they had enough evidence to charge Hunter with illegally buying a gun while being a drug user.
In the course of the 32-page letter, Clark dropped a bombshell warning on prosecutors: “President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial.”
To underline the point, Clark threatened that Biden testifying as a witness in a case brought by his own Department of Justice would create a “spectacle” and a “resulting constitutional crisis.”
In the intervening months since the letter was written, Clark has withdrawn as counsel for Hunter Biden, saying he expects to be called as a witness in the case. He declined comment to Politico for their article.
Additionally, the plea deal negotiated between Clark and government lawyers, which was widely criticized as being too lenient on the president’s son, fell apart when questioned by the judge overseeing the trial. The prosecutor overseeing the now-defunct deal has also been made a special prosecutor, a move that has also been widely criticized given his involvement in the controversial plea deal. And Hunter Biden now appears headed for trial during the upcoming election season.
According to Politico’s report, Hunter Biden’s lawyers also complained bitterly and repeatedly to prosecutors about former president Donald Trump’s attacks on Hunter. Reportedly, during a spring 2022 meeting at which Hunter’s lawyers tried to encourage DOJ lawyers not to charge their client, they used a 100-slide PowerPoint presentation. Reportedly, “The very first slide brought up Trump’s first impeachment and his ‘constant’ claims that Hunter Biden was a criminal.”