Hunter Biden Plea Deal

[JMWATS 95]

Wanted to get ya’lls thoughts on the White Privilege that was evident and favored on the Biden family throughout this case. 
 

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/06/20/us/hunter-biden-plea-deal

[PUB78 1,359]

The blatant corruption of the Biden crime family continues on.

[icanthearyou 4,463]

Has nothing to do with race or, political party.

There is a separate "justice" system for those who can fake contrition and, afford restitution.

[AU9377 4,979]

6 hours ago, PUB78 said:

The blatant corruption of the Biden crime family continues on.

Hunter Biden was charged with 2 counts of willful failure to pay taxes on income earned.  Those charges are misdemeanors.  Provided that the money was paid, which it has been, there is no defendant that cooperates and pleads guilty that would be sentenced to prison time for those charges.

The other charge is a firearms charge for lying about drug use on a document signed in connection with the purchase of a firearm.  He could have done what many of you claim to be a sacred right and simply purchased a firearm from a private individual, flea market etc.

The far right talking heads at Fox etc spent years telling us how Hunter was guilty of everything imaginable.  The Trump appointed special prosecutor spent years digging and found NOTHING to support criminal charges other than those I mentioned above.  The only fault that exists for your disappointment lies with those you, for some strange reason, trust to tell you the truth, yet miss the mark again and again.

Do people with money in this country get by with more than people without? Ofcourse they do.  That isn't isolated to the U.S. That is what happens with society in general around the world.

Edited June 21, 2023 by AU9377

[PUB78 1,359]

2 hours ago, AU9377 said:

Hunter Biden was charged with 2 counts of willful failure to pay taxes on income earned.  Those charges are misdemeanors.  Provided that the money was paid, which it has been, there is no defendant that cooperates and pleads guilty that would be sentenced to prison time for those charges.

The other charge is a firearms charge for lying about drug use on a document signed in connection with the purchase of a firearm.  He could have done what many of you claim to be a sacred right and simply purchased a firearm from a private individual, flea market etc.

The far right talking heads at Fox etc spent years telling us how Hunter was guilty of everything imaginable.  The Trump appointed special prosecutor spent years digging and found NOTHING to support criminal charges other than those I mentioned above.  The only fault that exists for your disappointment lies with those you, for some strange reason, trust to tell you the truth, yet miss the mark again and again.

Do people with money in this country get by with more than people without? Ofcourse they do.  That isn't isolated to the U.S. That is what happens with society in general around the world.

You must have your head stuck in the sand. Biden is the most corrupt president since William Harding. 

[AU9377 4,979]

2 hours ago, PUB78 said:

You must have your head stuck in the sand. Biden is the most corrupt president since William Harding. 

Anything other than empty conclusions to support that?  That is the problem. How many times does right wing media throw out unsupported allegations and harp on them with nothing more than  a collection of implied opinions and work you all into a frenzy only for you to be let down because there is no real meat to the allegations?

Obama's birth certificate.

Benghazzi

John Durham had discovered what again?  Was about to arrest who again?

Lock her up?

Hunter's laptop had evidence of millions from China and God only knows who else that Joe got to influence some unnamed policy?

How many times can they play you all like a fiddle and you not question their motivations in keeping you angry and tuned in?  The reason that they NEVER amount to anything is that they were never valid accusations to begin with.  People can make crap up all day long on Breitbart, talk radio or Hannity et al.  The problem is that when these fairy tales are then investigated by professional prosecutors, regardless of their political affiliation, there has to be real evidence for them to stand on their feet.  Instead of recognizing that, too many of you simply tune in and wait for the next "bombshell" to latch onto and the cycle starts all over again.

Edited June 22, 2023 by AU9377

[Son of A Tiger 561]

[AURex 2,018]

The offenses that Hunter Biden is being prosecuted for are almost never actually prosecuted for ANY OTHER US CITIZEN. The DOJ is prosecuting him only because the GOP wingnuts are going insane over the Biden family. The plea deal -- welp, for almost all Americans there would be no NEED for a plea deal. Pay the back taxes you owe, goodbye.

But it is important to make a big show of this for the eyes of the wingnuts.

 

[DKW 86 7,431]

12 hours ago, AU9377 said:

Hunter Biden was charged with 2 counts of willful failure to pay taxes on income earned.  Those charges are misdemeanors.  Provided that the money was paid, which it has been, there is no defendant that cooperates and pleads guilty that would be sentenced to prison time for those charges.

BACK TAXES WERE PAID ONLY AFTER CHARGES WERE FILED.

The other charge is a firearms charge for lying about drug use on a document signed in connection with the purchase of a firearm.  He could have done what many of you claim to be a sacred right and simply purchased a firearm from a private individual, flea market etc.

He could have but didnt.

The far right talking heads at Fox etc spent years telling us how Hunter was guilty of everything imaginable.  The Trump appointed special prosecutor spent years digging and found NOTHING to support criminal charges other than those I mentioned above.  The only fault that exists for your disappointment lies with those you, for some strange reason, trust to tell you the truth, yet miss the mark again and again.

You do realize that the very same thing you just said applies to half the people on this forum when it comes to trump? We have heard for years 24/7 blather that never came true?
"your disappointment lies with those you, for some strange reason, trust to tell you the truth, yet miss the mark again and again."

Do people with money in this country get by with more than people without? Of course they do.  That isn't isolated to the U.S. That is what happens with society in general around the world.

And some of us stand up to it. And some of us grovel at the hands of those that hate us and rationalize it.

Everything wrong with American Politics. "It's wrong if the other guys do it! It's totally fine if the folks I agree with do it!"

[CoffeeTiger 5,135]

[AU9377 4,979]

6 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Everything wrong with American Politics. "It's wrong if the other guys do it! It's totally fine if the folks I agree with do it!"

You are making that up.  It is wrong, regardless of who does it, but it also isn't mass murder.  I don't care if the name is Hunter Biden or Don Jr., 2 misdemeanor counts of tax evasion are not and should not result in prison time for a first offender that admits his actions and makes an attempt to pay the amount owed.  That is even amplified when there is a substance abuse issue that is being addressed.  There is no double standard. If the name was Sue Smith from Iowa, she would likely receive the same plea deal.  That is the point.  The difference is that Sue Smith would have likely never been examined to the same extent.

[icanthearyou 4,463]

16 hours ago, PUB78 said:

You must have your head stuck in the sand. Biden is the most corrupt president since William Harding. 

You have speculation, you have no proof.  The Reagan administration is by far the most corrupt in history.  That is fact.

[icanthearyou 4,463]

6 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Everything wrong with American Politics. "It's wrong if the other guys do it! It's totally fine if the folks I agree with do it!"

Total BS.  I don't know anyone who would not want Biden prosecuted and punished if he has done anything illegal.   However, when you just throw out accusations, when your "proof" falls apart, when your "witnesses" have no credibility,,,,

[AU9377 4,979]

13 hours ago, Son of A Tiger said:

When you have no other arguments to make and no meaningful explanation for the failure of your candidates, you turn to the trannies.

[Son of A Tiger 561]

I guess the Dems here don't believe Durham findings which further substantiate the corruption of the FBI.

The stunning revelation in Durham hearing should chill us to the core | Fox News

[homersapien 11,393]

7 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Everything wrong with American Politics. "It's wrong if the other guys do it! It's totally fine if the folks I agree with do it!"

No one has said what Hunter has done is "totally fine".

He is just not guilty of the things the MAGAs are accusing him of.

[homersapien 11,393]

Opinion | Hunter Biden Got Special Treatment — Especially Harsh

The president’s son pleaded guilty to charges that probably wouldn’t have been brought if his last name were different.

Opinion by Renato Mariotti

Tuesday’s announcement that Hunter Biden, the president’s son, agreed to plead guilty to federal tax and firearm crimes drew widespread criticism from Republicans, who slammed it as a “sweetheart deal.” Actually, Biden was treated harshly and — based on what we know publicly — received more severe treatment than a typical defendant.

The announcement of the charges by United States Attorney for Delaware David Weiss, a Trump appointee, should have been cause for celebration for anyone who believes in the rule of law. After all, although our system is imperfect, the fact that the son of the sitting president was investigated, prosecuted and convicted by the Justice Department demonstrates that no one is above the law.

Yet Republicans recoiled at the announcement, perhaps because Hunter Biden was accused in right-wing publications of everything from corruption to human trafficking, yet was only charged with two misdemeanor tax counts of failure to pay income tax and one count of possessing a firearm while a user of and addicted to a controlled substance.

You don’t have to be a lawyer to figure out that these are hardly the crimes of the century. Many critics have pointed out that Biden will almost certainly not receive prison time as a result of these charges, which is true. But while we don’t know what else he might have done — and as Weiss noted, the “investigation is ongoing” — if this is the extent of Biden’s wrongdoing, he has been treated much more harshly than the typical defendant.

Federal prosecutors charge a lot of firearm offenses every year. They charged 12,261 cases involving a firearm last year alone. The overwhelming majority of those cases involve the possession of a firearm by a felon, and those charges are used by prosecutors as a method to get felons with violent criminal histories or serious gang involvement off the street.

Another often-charged statute criminalizes the possession, use or brandishing of a firearm during the commission of a federal “crime of violence.” I have charged many defendants with gun offenses in my former career as a federal prosecutor, but until this week I had never heard of a prosecution of anyone for possessing a firearm while addicted to a controlled substance before the Hunter Biden case.

When I looked at crime statistics, I could see why. A Syracuse University study found that from 2013 to 2017, the DOJ brought a total of 35,758 prosecutions with a firearm charge as the lead charge in the indictment. Of those, 26,717 were felon-in-possession charges. Only 614 involved a charge for the unlawful shipment, transfer, receipt or possession of a firearm by a drug addict. That makes sense — federal prosecutors focus on large-scale narcotics traffickers, not drug users.

Most of the other former federal prosecutors I’ve spoken with aren’t familiar with a defendant being charged with this statute either. One prosecutor who was familiar with the statute said he charged it once, many years ago, involving a particularly problematic defendant.

As for the misdemeanor tax charges, I prosecuted tax cases and have defended many clients in criminal tax cases, and I’m not familiar with a misdemeanor tax charge ever being brought as the only tax charge in a case. The DOJ’s Tax Division has to approve every tax charge brought by prosecutors, and their practice is to focus on serious felony tax fraud or tax evasion cases. Those serious felony offenses would require evidence of fraud or affirmative efforts to evade taxes. Merely not paying your taxes isn’t enough.

Sometimes, when I charged serious tax fraud cases, I would add easy-to-prove misdemeanor counts to the indictment as a “back stop” of sorts if I lost on the more serious counts. The most typical misdemeanor that was charged is a failure to file a tax return, and that is trivial to prove. Biden was charged with something even less serious — a failure to pay taxes even though he did file a return. And the amount of his unpaid taxes — approximately $100,000 in 2017 and again in 2018 — is typically dealt with as a civil matter, with penalties and interest, rather than as a federal criminal case.

No competent federal prosecutor would initiate a multi-year criminal investigation into someone for merely failing to pay taxes, yet those misdemeanor charges are the only ones to which Biden will plead guilty. This looks like an investigation that has not turned up much.

If Hunter Biden were not the president’s son, it’s not clear whether prosecutors would have investigated for as long or as hard as they did, or that they would have decided to spend additional federal resources prosecuting misdemeanors instead of moving on to the next case.

It’s understandable why Weiss and his team did not want to appear to be pulling punches in a case involving the president’s son. Hunter has become a fixation of the GOP on the Hill, many of whom have publicly — and thus far without evidence — accused him of corruptly trading on his father’s connections to enrich himself and his family. For that wing of the Republican Party, anything short of a lengthy prison sentence will look like favoritism. But for anyone with actual federal criminal law experience, it is obvious that the DOJ’s aggressive prosecution of crimes that are rarely charged is anything but a “sweetheart deal.”

Renato Mariotti is Legal Affairs Columnist for POLITICO Magazine. He is a former federal prosecutor and co-host with Asha Rangappa of the “It’s Complicated” podcast.

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/06/22/hunter-biden-got-special-treatment-especially-harsh-00103184

 

[DKW 86 7,431]

5 hours ago, homersapien said:

No one has said what Hunter has done is "totally fine".

He is just not guilty of the things the MAGAs are accusing him of.

Like not paying his taxes until forced to by the IRS and answering incorrectly on a gun purchase form, a felony?

[TexasTiger 12,964]

1 hour ago, DKW 86 said:

Like not paying his taxes until forced to by the IRS and answering incorrectly on a gun purchase form, a felony?

How many states have gun purchase forms?

[AUApostle 7,651]

 

[TexasTiger 12,964]

2 hours ago, AUDevil said:

 

So an out of control drug addict who admittedly traded on his father’s name, made claims that his powerful father was gonna make them sorry if they didn’t fuel his hookers & drugs? Well, he had to be telling the truth.

[homersapien 11,393]

On 6/22/2023 at 6:51 PM, DKW 86 said:

Like not paying his taxes until forced to by the IRS and answering incorrectly on a gun purchase form, a felony?

No, I was referring to the Republican accusations of him extorting billions of dollars from foreign entities in collaboration with his father.

Otherwise, he was guilty of doing the above things.  He admitted it. (He was also addicted to drugs at the time.)

(FWIW, something like 17% of people in this country don't pay their taxes.  And Republicans are against providing the IRS with additional resources to recover them.)

What's your point?

Edited June 24, 2023 by homersapien

[AU9377 4,979]

16 hours ago, AUDevil said:

 

What is the crime evidenced here?  You need more than assumptions and fairy tale narratives.

Do you know for a fact that Joe was there?  Do you even know what this message was in reference to?

The answer to all of the above is NO.  This serves one purpose and that purpose is to cloud the conversation with vague information meant to suggest or imply some grand criminal undertaking was afoot.

Do you even realize that Joe Biden held no public office at the time this message was sent?  Most don't.

Edited June 23, 2023 by AU9377

[icanthearyou 4,463]

On 6/22/2023 at 12:11 PM, Son of A Tiger said:

I guess the Dems here don't believe Durham findings which further substantiate the corruption of the FBI.

The stunning revelation in Durham hearing should chill us to the core | Fox News

You obviously did not watch Durham fall apart in what was suppose to be a "friendly" congressional hearing.  He presented himself as a purely partisan player who lacked basic knowledge,,, just grifting.

[Son of A Tiger 561]

26 minutes ago, icanthearyou said:

You obviously did not watch Durham fall apart in what was suppose to be a "friendly" congressional hearing.  He presented himself as a purely partisan player who lacked basic knowledge,,, just grifting.

Yes I watched the Dems act like a bunch of clowns.