Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe Lowell told CBS’s “Face the Nation” that, despite a plea deal for tax-related charges unexpectedly falling apart in court last month, a trial for President Biden’s son still isn’t inevitable. This follows the announcement last week of David Weiss being appointed special counsel to oversee the investigation into Hunter Biden.
“Remember, it was the prosecutors who came forward and asked if there was a resolution possible,” Lowell said.
Lowell laid out several possibilities for what could have led to the abrupt shift in court, including that “they changed their view as they were standing in court in Delaware.”
After the judge noted that the deal included a broad immunity for Hunter Biden, the prosecution withdrew its plea deal.
“Look what happened on July 26th,” Lowell said. “One of the possibilities is, the prosecutors stood up and decided for lots of reasons, that might be apparent to the viewer, they didn’t like what people were saying about the deal they approved.”
He added that no experienced defense team would allow their client to pleade guilty to a misdemeanor on a Monday when they knew a felony charge was coming on a Wednesday, as happened in Hunter Biden’s case.
“They changed their decision on the fly, standing up in court,” Lowell said.
The judge had also asked whether the immunity would apply to Biden being investigation for any violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people lobbying on behalf of foreign interests to register with the federal government. Biden had business dealings with multiple foreign companies. Lowell said that, as part of the five-year investigation into Hunter Biden, that was also investigated.
According to Lowell, both Biden’s legal team and prosecutors have been trying to avoid a trial.
“We were trying to avoid one all along, and so were the prosecutors who came forward to us and were the ones to say, ‘Can there be a resolution short of a prosecution?’ So they wanted it, and maybe they still do want it,” Lowell said.
Both prosecutors and Biden’s legal team agreed to a diversion agreement for gun charges, which both sides signed and which Lowell said is filed and remains a binding agreement.
When it comes to the special counsel, Lowell said, “While Mr. Weiss’s title changed last week, he’s the same person he’s been for the last five years. He’s a Republican U.S. attorney appointed by a Republican president and attorney general, who had federal prosecutors working this case for five years, looking at every transaction that Hunter was involved in.”
Lowell went on to note that Hunter Biden was being investigated for five years by attorneys appointed by former President Donald Trump.
If something changes from the previous charges against Biden, which included two tax charges and the gun charge, “The question should be asked, what infected the process that was not the facts and the law?”
Lowell said that there was no new evidence that could have changed the charges.
The other possibilities for what led to the plea deal being pulled, Lowell laid out, were that either the prosecution wrote something and weren’t clear what they meant, or that they knew what they meant and had misstated it to Hunter Biden’s lawyers.
