The judge overseeing the federal government's case against Hunter Biden just issued a new order in response to allegations that Biden's legal team engaged in "misrepresentations."
U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika issued the order, according to the Washington Examiner, on Friday.
Noreika is the same judge who essentially upended the plea deal that Hunter Biden claimed to have with federal prosecutors. Biden was supposed to plead guilty to tax and gun misdemeanors in order to avoid jail time. But, the plea deal fell apart when Noreika began asking the parties about the specifics of the deal, especially about whether Biden would get immunity from future prosecution as part of the deal.
But, Noreika's order, here, has to do with something else.
U.S. Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO), the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has alleged that Jessica Bengels - a member of Hunter Biden's legal team - called the court clerk's office and pretended to be a member of Smith's legal team.
To be clear, the allegation is that a member of Hunter Biden's legal team called the clerk and pretended to be a member of the legal team of Smith, who is supporting the prosecution of Hunter Biden.
On top of this, Smith has alleged that this member of Hunter Biden's legal team attempted to get the clerk to remove from the docket the amicus brief that Smith submitted to the court because this brief contained supposedly sensitive documents about Hunter Biden.
It appears that Judge Noreika has found that there is at least some truth to Smith's allegation.
Last week, Noreika wrote:
[Bengels] represented that she worked with Mr. Kittila [i.e. Smith's attorney] and requested the amicus materials be taken down because they contained sensitive grand jury, taxpayer, and Social Security information. It appears that the caller misrepresented her identity and who she worked for in an attempt to improperly convince the Clerk's Office to remove the amicus materials from the docket.
Noreika, after finding that there is truth to the allegations, asked Hunter Biden's legal team why it ought not to be punished for this.
Hunter Biden's legal team responded by claiming that the situation was merely "an unfortunate and unintentional miscommunication between a staff member at our firm and employees of the Court."
Then, it was on Friday that Noreika issued an order in which she told the parties that they are to have no further communication with the court clerk.
Instead, Noreika told the parties to direct any inquiries that they may have directly to her.
The whole situation is troubling, to say the least.
