they walk into the courtroom and equally i can t begin to understand how hunter biden s lawyers walked him into the courthouse without knowing what the constraints and limitations of the deal are. evan perez, a good time for you to enter this conversation here. this took a turn today that we were not expecting. you know, that is the understatement of the year. i mean, look, we know a lot about this investigations. we certainly have been covering it since 2020, and we know that a lot of things that appear to be part of the disagreement are at the center of this. we know that investigators looked into money laundering charges. they looked into whether they charged hunter biden with violating the fara law, the foreign agents registrations act. all of those things were covered in-depth as part of this
charge against hunter biden and the idea at at this late hour and at the final moment this judge, they are saying we don t really agree on this and it is just astonishing and something that we know that was a big part of this and guys, going back to the politics of this, you heard from those irs whistle blowers, that is parts of what they believe certainly was strong enough to bring charges on, but prosecutors decided warrant st wasn t strong enough and they didn t know it was quite there and they decided to narrow the tax charges to the 2018 misdemeanor. it s a very surprising turn of events and this is a history-making case by all accounts and certainly something like this doesn t happen every day in federal court. elie, role play with me for a moment.
who doesn t want to walk out of that courthouse without a deal more? who has the biggest incentive to settle things over the next several hours here? we have about a minute left. hunter biden by far. for doj, it s a question of do we get the plea on the books or carry on the investigation. there maybe political ramifications, but hunter biden is the one at risk here. he was he and his lawyers believe they had a deal in place that would almost certainly have spared him from prison. if this deal collapses, and it should be noted i have seen lawyers get together under the gun and put things together very quickly, so this could still sort of come back to life. but if it does not, he s going to walk out of that courtroom and have no agreement with doj, no assurance, no protection against my of those other potential crimes that evan just laid out. anything is in play at that point. thank you for very much. we ll let you run to the next camera. the major breaking news that at
announcement saying this resolves the investigation into hunter biden as we know it, but a statement from the federal prosecutor s office said the investigations this resolves the tax charges and the drug charges and the investigations is still ongoing which seemed like a formality, but maybe not. that could be the issue here. there is some tension between the idea of this resolves as hunter biden s team has put it and on the other hand this is ongoing and prosecutors do say this is ongoing up until the very, very end, but perhaps there s been a lack of communication about that between the parties and the judge is being extra, extra careful here and wants to make sure that there s no controversy and nobody says, well, our understanding is actually different than their understanding. elie, stand by for just a moment and we do have evan perez back with us. evan, what more are we learning? well, one of the things i think you guys are putting your finger on it on a thing that we so
think you need to look in a different place and that is 100% the authority that any judge would have and the judge is making a record and making a statement to the broader world that congress, if you want to dig into this, that s not my business and my job is to decide whether or not to accept this plea. elie, some of the conditions hub hunter biden having to abstain from alcohol or drug use. what do you make of that? absolutely standard. you have a to abide by non-encarciliatory, sometimes you have a curfew, sometimes you have to check in and make an appointment with your pre-trial officer. random drug testing and what would happen if he were to test positive? sometimes people do fail their drug testing, primarily to