It was expected that Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, would plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of willful failure to pay federal income tax. This would be a part of a plea deal to help him avoid jail time on a separate charge of felony gun possession. 

However, Judge Maryellen Noreika did not accept the plea agreement – demanding more information from both the defense and the prosecution.

She then went on to question whether or not the deal itself was constitutional.

During a three-hour hearing in Federal District Court, Judge Noreika requested that each side make changes to the deal. clarifying her role and inserting language that limits the scope of immunity from prosecution that had thus far been granted to Hunter Biden in regard to his past business dealings that had come to light under this investigation.

Judge Noreika promptly focused on a crucial aspect of the agreement: a paragraph that granted Hunter Biden extensive immunity from prosecution indefinitely, covering various matters investigated by the Justice Department over a five-year period. The judge, who was appointed by former President Donald J. Trump in 2017, raised concerns about why the prosecutors had drafted this provision in a manner that left her without the legal authority to reject it.

She then exposed, after stern questioning, serious differences between the defense and the prosecution on what, exactly, that paragraph meant.

According to Chris Clark, Mr. Biden’s lead lawyer, the indemnification provided to his client extended beyond the tax and gun offenses revealed during the investigation led by David C. Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware. It also covered potential offenses related to his lucrative consulting engagements with companies in Ukraine, China, and Romania.

On the other hand, the prosecutors had a much narrower interpretation. They believed that Mr. Biden’s immunity only applied to the offenses discovered during their investigation into his tax returns from 2014 and his illegal firearm purchase in 2018, which occurred during a period of heavy drug use.

During the court proceedings, the judge inquired if the investigation was still ongoing, to which Leo Weiss, one of the lead prosecutors in the case, confirmed with a simple “yes.”

As this came to light, Hunter Biden told Judge Noreika that he could not agree to a deal that did not offer him broad immunity.

In closing, the judge said, “I’m not doing something that gets me outside my lane of my branch of government.”