Hunter Biden made big money abroad by dropping the name of his powerful father, and the same tactic seems to have nearly helped him to evade tax and gun charges.

By the Editorial Board of the Wall Street Journal

August 27, 2023 at 11:00PM

Hunter Biden (HAIYUN JIANG, New York Times/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Hunter Biden made big money abroad by dropping the name of his powerful father, and the same tactic seems to have nearly helped him to evade tax and gun charges.

Correspondence between federal prosecutors and Biden's lawyer has been leaked to the press, and it shows the depth of the case's political taint.

After news reports last fall suggested federal agents had enough evidence to prosecute, Hunter Biden's lawyer, Chris Clark, decided to bring up the big guy. "President Biden now unquestionably would be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial," he wrote to David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, according to Politico. "This of all cases justifies neither the spectacle of a sitting President testifying at a criminal trial nor the potential for a resulting Constitutional crisis."

This is clarifying about the kind of pressure Weiss was under not to bring a serious case. Through last fall and this spring, Politico adds, Clark "sought meetings with people at the highest levels of the Justice Department," including "the head of the Criminal Division, the head of the Tax Division, the Office of Legal Counsel, the Office of the Solicitor General, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and the attorney general himself."

Most such entreaties failed, but Clark finally secured an April 26 meeting with Weiss and Associate Deputy Attorney General Bradley Weinsheimer. "Please advise," Clark had written to Weinsheimer, "whether you would be the appropriate person to hear our client's appeal, in the event that the U.S. Attorney's Office decides to charge Mr. Biden."

Emails the next month show Biden's attorneys working with Weiss's staff on a deal that would have required no guilty plea by Hunter. That appears to have changed days after IRS agent Gary Shapley went public saying the investigation into Biden had been hampered by politics. Then Biden agreed to plead guilty to tax misdemeanors, but with a broad provision for future immunity that eventually fell apart under questioning by the judge.

Weiss is still on the case, now as a special counsel, but how does Attorney General Merrick Garland possibly think that the public can trust his judgment after this fiasco?