This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Longtime liberal lawyer Alan Dershowitz, the Felix Frankfurter professor of law, emeritus, at Harvard, says the Hunter Biden plea deal that his lawyers and prosecutors brought to a federal court deserved to be rejected this week.
The judge turned it down citing questions over whether it could be used in the future to ban prosecution of Hunter Biden on charges and cases not involved in the current negotiations.
Those current issues are a refusal to pay taxes for several years and lying on a gun purchase application form.
The deal would have thrown out a long list of potential felonies and replaced them with a couple of misdemeanors and a diversion program. But prosecutors have admitted that Hunter Biden remains under investigation for acting as an unregistered foreign agent. And there could be more.
Dershowitz, on his Substack page, said judges are responsible for deciding that a plea bargain is in the interests of justice.
"Judge Maryellen Noreika was correct in questioning both sides about the meaning of the bargain and about its implications for further inquiry into matters that were not included in the current investigation. She correctly refused to accept the plea bargain on the current record," he said.
He explained the Constitution limits the power of federal judges to decide actual cases, and if both sides are in agreement, there's no longer a "controversy."
But judges still are responsible for looking out for the interests of justice.
"In this case, it is anything but clear whether justice has been done, and it is crystal clear that it has not been seen to be done by many rightfully skeptical Americans," he wrote. "Both sides must now go back to the drawing board and see if they can come up with a resolution that satisfies the judge. I predict they will because both sides benefit from resolving this case without a contentious trial."
The sticking point will be, he predicted, the defense demand that Hunter Biden be "free of any possibility of future prosecution."
And, he noted, "Both sides are worried that if Donald Trump were to reclaim the presidency, he would have his justice department go after what he calls the 'Biden crime family' with a vengeance."
He said another requirement should be a hearing "at which Attorney General Garland and Delaware’s United States, David Weiss, are questioned as to whether Mr. Weiss did or did not have the authority to investigate beyond the borders of Delaware."
And he said total transparency will be needed.
