On eve of plea hearing for Hunter Biden, House Committee Chair urges district court to consider "improper conduct" surrounding prosecution

As reported in this CNN article, the "Republican chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee submitted materials Tuesday to the judge in Hunter Biden’s criminal case, flagging recent claims from IRS whistleblowers that the probe into President Joe Biden’s son was tainted by political interference." Here is more:

Rep. Jason Smith, a Missouri Republican, wants District Judge Maryellen Noreika to “consider” these allegations while she presides over Hunter Biden’s plea hearing on Wednesday morning in Delaware. “The Defendant appears to have benefited from political interference which calls into question the propriety of the investigation of the U.S. Attorney’s Office,” Smith’s attorney wrote in a court filing, which went to say, “it is critical that the Court consider the Whistleblower Materials before determining whether to accept the Plea Agreement.”

The GOP’s filing has become a controversy in its own right, after Noreika threatened to sanction Hunter Biden’s lawyers Tuesday after a member of his legal team “misrepresented her identity” to court officials so she could “improperly” get documents removed from the public docket, she said in an order.

Hunter Biden is set to plead guilty Wednesday to two federal tax misdemeanors, for failing to pay taxes on time in 2017 and 2018. The plea deal will also resolve a felony gun charge if Hunter Biden abides by court-imposed rules, according to court filings. CNN has previously reported that prosecutors are expected to recommend that the president’s son avoid jail.

As the judge presiding over the case, Noreika has the power to reject the plea agreement that was negotiated between Hunter Biden and the Justice Department, though that would be a surprising and unexpected move. The House committee and Smith are not parties in the case....

Also on Tuesday, the right-wing Heritage Foundation urged Noreika to postpone Wednesday’s plea hearing so she could “obtain additional information” directly from the Justice Department that might address the lingering questions about whether there was any political interference in the probe.

The filings of Rep. Smith make for an interesting read, and they are available at this link. Here is an excerpt (with footnotes/cites omitted):

Courts may reject plea agreements and there is precedent for them to do so for a variety of reasons. Legal experts have described situations where judges rejected plea agreements “if judges believe the agreements do not adequately address the nature of the crimes, the rights of victims, or the interests of the public” or when judges “disagree with prosecutors’ proposed sentence in order to avoid any surprises at the later sentencing hearing.”  For example, judges have rejected plea agreements because the plea agreement is “flawed” and they “don’t agree with the outcome;” the judge finds “the sentencing options available strikingly deficient;” the plea agreement “falls short given the backdrop of the parties’ motivation, [the individual’s] trusted employment position, and the threats to national and global security…that [the parties’] actions caused;” and “[i]t was not in the best interest of the community, or the country, to accept the[] plea agreements.”  The Court need not intrude on prosecutorial discretion.

The situation here is not that the Justice Department exercised charging or plea negotiation discretion, but the presence of credible allegations that the investigation, charging decisions, and plea negotiations were tainted by improper conduct at various levels of the government.

Prior related posts:

• Hunter Biden agrees to plea deal seeking to avoid prison time on tax and gun charges
• A "sweetheart deal"?: Minor (mostly uninformed) musings about Hunter Biden's prosecution and plea deal
• Some reflections in headlines on Hunter Biden's "sweetheart" plea deal