The story of the Biden family business continues to be the lead story in American politics. Let us strive to keep our eye on it one way or another.
The pending plea deal arranged for Hunter Biden makes up an essential component of the story. In a post behind NRO’s subscription paywall, Brittany Bernstein provides the comments of former United States Attorney Brett Tolman on the deal:
Brett Tolman, executive director of Right on Crime and former U.S. attorney for the District of Utah, told National Review that the misdemeanor charges against Hunter Biden are “not consistent with any historical practice.”
The DOJ, he explained, is run by attorney-general memos. The Holder memo says federal prosecutors “should ordinarily” charge the most serious readily provable offense though decisions “must always be made in the context of ‘an individualized assessment of the extent to which particular charges fit the specific circumstances of the case, are consistent with the purpose of the Federal criminal code and maximize the impact of Federal resources on crime.’” And, “in all cases, the charges should fairly represent the defendant’s criminal conduct, and due consideration should be given to the defendant’s substantial assistance in an investigation or prosecution.”
The culture of the DOJ is about “charging as many felonies as you can and getting as long a sentence as you can,” Tolman said. “And everybody else that’s been crushed by the Department of Justice or the criminal-justice system in this country has experienced that.”
“When I was U.S. attorney, I think I authorized maybe one or two diversions and they’re oftentimes cases where you don’t have victims. They’re also not part of any sort of top priority [at] DOJ,” he said.
But by contrast, gun possession cases have been a “top priority of DOJ for a very long time” under Project Safe Neighborhoods.
During his time as assistant U.S. attorney, the average sentence for gun possession cases was five years. He recalled sending one person to prison for 3.5 years just for possessing ammo without a gun.
“There’s just hundreds of thousands of these that are people serving long, lengthy prison sentences for a simple possession case,” he said.
He noted that the allegations stemming from Hunter Biden’s laptop should have made the case “one of the biggest, highest priority cases” the DOJ would ever see.
“But everything about this case is wrong. Everything about it in terms of the scope of the investigation, the length of time it took to investigate this. If you’re going to take that length of time, there is no way the only charges that you’re coming up with are two tax misdemeanors, a felony possession of firearm diversion and no jail time,” he said.
Much more here.
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