Something is starting to smell really rotten about this proceeding. Apparently the judge is a Trump appointee who is now claiming without evidence that Hunter Biden’s lawyers pretended to be opposition lawyers to get things that should be sealed placed under seal, and still refuses to seal those things.

  • LEDZeppelin@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I will believe in the system when Jared is asked to explain how and why he got $2B from Saudi Arabia

  • utopianfiat@lemmy.worldOP
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    1 year ago

    There’s a lot that’s starting to smell really rotten here:

    U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, appointed by Donald Trump, pressed about the terms of the deal that was struck with U.S. Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, another Trump appointee who was kept on by President Joe Biden to oversee the case.

    Separately, from https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/25/hunter-biden-judge-plea-deal-phone-call-00108184

    In a brief order Tuesday afternoon, U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika wrote that an employee at Latham & Watkins, a law firm representing the president’s son, had called the court clerk’s office and falsely claimed to work for a Republican lawyer in the hopes of persuading the clerk to remove documents that apparently contained Biden’s personal tax information.

    Latham denied any misconduct, saying the firm’s employee identified herself as a Latham staffer and called from a law firm phone that typically displays “LATHAM” on the caller ID. The firm said there must have been an “unfortunate and unintentional miscommunication” between the employee and court staff.

    Honestly I believe one of two things happened, either a court clerk screwed up and is unwilling to take the blame for it, or someone in Judge Noreika’s office made this up to try to screw Hunter out of a plea deal.

    Knowing the level of corruption in the Republican party, you can guess which theory I’m favoring.

  • ashok36@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    So the judge and the prosectuor are both Trump appointees. They obviously got the call from the GOP honchos to derail this plea deal or at least extend it a few weeks so that it stays in the news.

    The prosecutors, at the judge’s asking, told Biden today that just because he plead guilty didn’t mean he wouldn’t be charged with other related crimes at some undetermined time in the future. With a promise like that, why would anyone accept a plea deal? Why take the gimme if you’re going to have the sword of Damocles over your head until the next republican administration is in power?

    • lynny@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      No, it’s because the DoJ is intentionally trying to take a neutral position in what they know is a very delicate issue.

      Honestly it would be a tad concerning if they hadn’t used Trump appointees for this case. It’s not as if people appointed under Trump are beholden to him or even think like him. Look at how many Trump appointed federal judges shot down his election fraud cases.

      • khepri@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Yeah, even most of the judges he appointed, who he no doubt hoped would be in his pocket forever, seem to recognize that supporting Trump, the way he’d like to be supported, in an actual legal proceeding, would be weapons-grade stupid for them. Trump has an outside chance at another 4 years, maybe, whereas these judges are on the bench for life in most cases, and most of them get that they’ll have to be able to operate in future administrations rather than burn their careers for this dumbdumb the way he gets his lawyers to do.