and so, michael schmidt, there was some drama surrounding that last minute court filing from a republican lawmaker that mike memoli is talking about. what is that all about? so, basically the chairman of the house ways and means committee tried to file this amicus brief, this friend of the court brief, with the judge that laid out a lot of the allegations made by the whistle-blower to essentially try and get them on the record and before the judge as the judge was going to be making the decision about whether to accept this plea agreement. there was a fight back and forth between hunter biden s lawyers and the lawyers for the chairman of the ways and means committee about whether they could simply just throw this information on the docket. the judge sealed it, but in the process there was another back and forth fight about whether
tom. barbara mcquaid is still with us. barbara, again, is this not unusual upon unusual? i would say it is unusual because usually the parties are very prepared about what they re agreeing to and what they re not agreeing to. i think this is probably likely a hiccup. it is unusual that you would have these sort of two different agreements going on at the same time. and it sounds like the judge here is looking out for the interests of hunter biden. she wants to make sure that he s not agreeing on the one hand to this deal where he gets probation and then the government is going to sort of back door him by continuing to investigate other crimes and spring those on him when he thinks he s resolving a whole case today. normally the language that gets included in a plea agreement goes something like this, the government agrees not to prosecute the defendant for any other crimes of which it is currently aware. and that protects the government, in case they find out that this person in detr
motivated talking point? well, i do think that the bidens are very vulnerable politically. particularly on hunter biden s business dealings with burisma and the ukrainian gas company, and dealings with china. i think that is a legitimate political issue for republicans to attack on. the challenge for the gop is oh, i think we just lost charlie dent s image and i apologize for that. that s what happens on live tv. you re back with us? go ahead, if you would start over again. look, the whole hunter biden issue with respect to his dealings with burisma and the chinese does smell badly. and it smacks of influence peddling. that said, there is no evidence so far that hunter biden has used his has somehow criminally impicated the president. that s the issue here. that s where i think the gop
of the family, he and his wife and their young child and his grown children are a part of the festivities here, whether it was fourth of july fireworks or a state event or an entertainment performance that happened at the white house. he s visible as a member of this family. and, of course, he s a protectee of the secret service. in court today, he s got his protective detail. and so forth. so, we will watch as everyone does what happens here and i m not a lawyer, but having covered a lot of these cases, the expectation was how to execute this court appearance with as minimal political pain from the perspective of hunter biden, his father who is now a candidate for re-election, and so forth. this certainly injects some uncertainty and that, of course, will raise ongoing questions. on capitol hill we have seen how hunter biden s business activities and so forth have been the focus of criticism. and so if any of that weighs in today, that would not be
that was at 11:31. and chris clark who represents hunter biden says as far as i m concerned, the plea agreement is null and void. just as i left the courtroom itself, the judge determined that there should be a ten-minute recess to try and figure out whether or not the two parties can quickly come to an agreement. otherwise, the trial clock is on. as i was leaving the courtroom, she was talking about status conferences, future filings, as if there was no plea agreement at all, the very reason we re here today does not exist. as we re standing here, i m locking at my clock, my watch to make sure they re not back in, as i stand here there is no current plea deal between the justice department and the son of the president. that s where we stand. so, tom, kind of listening in to all of this, so you re talking about something that happened eight minutes ago, the judge did a ten-minute pause there, we re talking about right now this should any minute now be coming back in and discussing