over a disagreement about how to handle a more serious felony gun charge and then questions about additional potential charges down the road. the question right now is whether or not the two sides can actually work things out or whether this means hunter could actually be headed to trial later on this year. a lot to get to. let s get into it. mike memoli outside the courthouse for us in delaware, peter baker chief white house correspondent for the new york times joining us, also an msnbc political analyst, harry litman as well, former deputy assistant attorney general and a professor of constitutional law at ucla. i know we re getting some new reporting in now, court back in session. what do we know? well, yasmin, this agreement that was the result of a five-year investigation by the u.s. attorney here in delaware was supposed to be on a glide path to conclusion here, the proceedings today an opportunity for the judge to really stress test that agreement, and it appears b
Or not they accept the plea agreement. that s something i more typically see in my limited experience of covering these. normally we never go down these roads at all. the judge says i might normally accept that, but you all sent me a copy of your pretrial diversion agreement. in that you re potentially asking me one day to make a determination as to whether or not the facts add up to hunter biden vie liting that agreement, and the government can make an argument whether or not they want to pursue charges. she has current concerns about that from a constitutionality perspective and separation of power where she believes i might be in a position where i m a gate keeper as to whether or not the government files charges. federal prosecutors say, well,
Conferences, when do we need to have briefs. speedy trial act considerations. i left the courtroom at that point. as i m leaving the judge says, you know what? let s take some time. let s take ten minutes and see if you all can t come to a resolution on what this actually means and where we go from there. you take longer than 10, 15 minutes, a number of conferences between hunter biden, his attorney chris clark, number of conferences amongst prosecutors, the two parties meet and talk and then they come to a resolution on how they want to proceed and effectively chris clark says, look, we agree with the government that the plea agreement today only covers the specific statement of facts in the criminal information we ve filed in this case. in other words just the taxes, just the possession of a gun while uing of abusing drugs. paraphrasing, but that s effectively the agreement they ve come to. the judge says sounds good on that.
Significant questions still outstanding is and perhaps nonalignment about what could potentially be outstanding. based on the latest information we had, it does appear after a significant breakdown about 90 minutes ago, the u.s. attorney s office here in delaware as well as hunter biden s lawyers are cobbling back together an agreement, a revised agreement that would limit the scope of what hunter biden could still face charges for in the future. remember, this was all supposed to be an agreement to two misdemeanor counts about failure to pay his taxes in 2017 and 2018 and then separately to enter into a pretrial diversion program in response to him purchasing a firearm without properly certifying that he was not engaged in drug use at the time. that of course is a potential felony charge they were willing to throw out if he went through this pretrial diversion program. the revised agreement as we understand it based on some of the most recent developments in the courtroom would be tha
Doing this piecemeal, are you going to have to come back to at a different point to me and say okay, we have new charges or a new agreement which covers new conduct. there was a difference between what the prosecutor seemed to think that it was and what the defense to think it that it was. they appeared to be under the belief that this generally covered things. prosecutors believe look, this only covers a certain amount of conduct, the years 2014 to 2019 with respect to tax charges and in that same time period anything tied to the possession of a gun by hunter biden and drug use. that s where things stood at that point, and then prosecutors said, look, if this doesn t if this precludes us from filing additional charges, they said, quote, no deal. and at that point the attorney for hunter biden said, yeah, we agree no deal. and the judge moved on to scheduling this as if it was any other court proceeding. we need to have status