Alternate headline: Special Counsel Even Toadier Than First Thought.

Until now, it appeared that Hunter Biden and his attorneys blew up a sweetheart plea deal that would have kept the president’s son from any felony convictions. That didn’t make much sense, considering the array of felonies that potentially could result. However, the New York Times reveals that US Attorney David Weiss had planned to let Hunter off with no charges at all for tax evasion.

The plea deal resulted from a last-minute intervention by IRS investigators and House Republicans, and apparently caught Hunter’s attorneys in an unpleasant surprise:

The deal’s collapse — chronicled in over 200 pages of confidential correspondence between Mr. Weiss’s office and Mr. Biden’s legal team, and interviews with those close to Mr. Biden, lawyers involved in the case and Justice Department officials — came after intense negotiations that started with the prospect that Mr. Biden would not be charged at all and now could end in his possible indictment and trial.

Earlier this year, The Times found, Mr. Weiss appeared willing to forgo any prosecution of Mr. Biden at all, and his office came close to agreeing to end the investigation without requiring a guilty plea on any charges. But the correspondence reveals that his position, relayed through his staff, changed in the spring, around the time a pair of I.R.S. officials on the case accused the Justice Department of hamstringing the investigation. Mr. Weiss suddenly demanded that Mr. Biden plead guilty to committing tax offenses.

Now, the I.R.S. agents and their Republican allies say they believe the evidence they brought forward, at the precise time they did, played a role in influencing the outcome, a claim senior law enforcement officials dispute.

That was the clear intent of the diversion agreement on the firearms charges. Weiss didn’t want to prosecute Hunter for anything, even for the kind of firearms crimes for which Joe Biden and the DoJ demand more prosecution. There was nothing that the IRS investigators could do about that, not directly, since firearms crimes do not fall under their jurisdiction. However, they certainly saw that Weiss was attempting to corruptly run out the statute-of-limitation clock on tax-evasion felonies and had already succeeded on some of them.

Once Republicans took over the House, those IRS agents became whistleblowers, resulting in intervention by James Comer and Jim Jordan. The timing on this matches up with the NYT’s new narrative, too. Remember this warning in early May from Comer and Chuck Grassley to Weiss and the DoJ about cutting a premature plea deal for Hunter?

James Comer & Chuck Grassley will be holding a press conference on Wednesday 👀

Comer just sent a message to the DOJ:

“Do not indict Hunter Biden before Wednesday…

We know exactly what this family was doing…

Wednesday will be a very big day for the American people in… pic.twitter.com/4nT8Spgfkh

— Patriot4Life (@Patriot4Life72) May 7, 2023

By the time of the press conference, the IRS whistleblowers had already contacted relevant House committees. The presser itself revealed the 20 LLCs run by Biden Inc to launder payments from foreign sources to the various members of the Biden family. The House Oversight Committee already identified millions of dollars received by these LLCs through Treasury’s Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs); they would later identify even more payments through other SARs that Oversight forced Treasury to release. The warning was on May 7th; the press conference took place on May 10th.

And then this happened on May 15th:

Four months later, on Monday, May 15, a familiar figure reached out to Mr. Clark: Lesley Wolf, a top Weiss deputy with whom Mr. Clark had developed a rapport over the previous two years. In a conference call with the Biden legal team, she acknowledged Mr. Clark’s core demand: that his client never be asked to plead guilty to anything.

She then made a proposition — a deal in which Mr. Biden would not plead guilty, but would agree to what is known as a deferred prosecution agreement.

And then this also happened on May 15th:

It all began to explode into public view on May 15 — the same day Ms. Wolf contacted Mr. Clark — when it was reported that the investigative team that had worked on the case, including Mr. Shapley, had been removed. The next day the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee fired off a letter to the I.R.S. commissioner demanding an explanation.

As we know now, all hell broke loose when this went public. Now that the IRS investigators were cut off from the prosecution, they passed along all the evidence that had been suppressed and stalled by Weiss to the House committees, which made them public.

And then this happened eight days later:

On Tuesday, May 23, after four days of silence, Ms. Wolf delivered unwelcome news. Mr. Weiss had revised what he wanted in the deal, now demanding that Mr. Biden plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay his taxes. It crossed a red line for Mr. Clark.

Erupting in anger, Mr. Clark accused Ms. Wolf of misleading him. He renounced the possibility of any deal, but after consulting with Mr. Biden, reversed course and told Ms. Wolf that Mr. Biden was willing to go along.

Welcome to the world of politically corrupt prosecutions, Mr. Clark. Weiss was apparently happy to bury Hunter Biden’s crimes on behalf of Joe Biden as long as the machinations took place in the dark. Once the IRS whistleblowers shone a bright light on them, though, the roaches scurried for cover.

What about those whistleblowers now? What will be their reward for exposing Weiss’ cooked-up non-prosecution and epic stall? Hunter’s lawyers have a suggestion:

While Mr. Biden’s legal team agrees that the I.R.S. agents affected the deal, his lawyers have contended to the Justice Department that by disclosing details about the investigation to Congress, they broke the law and should be prosecuted.

Oh, the irony. Hunter evades taxes on millions of dollars, but shouldn’t even have to plead guilty to avoid jail time. IRS investigators expose corruption in the DoJ’s handling of the case — notably by first following the chain of command, then going to Congress, as is the proper path for whistleblowing — and they should get prosecuted.

And who knows? In the Joe Biden/Merrick Garland Department of Political Justice, they just might.

This makes it more clear than ever that David Weiss should be removed as both special counsel in this case and as US Attorney in Delaware. Garland should resign for his own politically corrupt act in making Weiss special counsel in violation of the statute governing those appointments, an obvious attempt to cover up what the New York Times is exposing today. And if they won’t, well, the House has its first two targets for impeachment.