JC

During a remarkable discussion this weekend on Jake Tapper’s CNN show, the celebrated anchor first surprised his viewers by correctly reporting that Hunter Biden did in fact somehow earn sketchy millions — “substantial sums” — from Ukrainian and Chinese sources. Tapper left unsaid, but painfully obvious, that nobody still knows what Hunter supposedly got paid for, exactly.

Maybe someday, someone will ask the Bidens that question.

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Next, Tapper shocked CNN’s lefty viewers even more, when he correctly pointed out that, during the 2016 Trump-Biden debates, Biden firmly but falsely said “my son has NOT made money, in terms of this thing about, what you’re talking about, China … that’s NOT true.”

Biden clearly lied and did not make a mistake. Bob Peters, I mean Joe, didn’t say “I don’t know whether Hunter is getting paid by the Chinese.” Instead he said, “that’s not true.” While one of Tapper’s co-anchors gamely tossed out the prepackaged defense that “nothing connects Hunter’s money to Biden,” he protested too much. Tapper hadn’t yet accused Hunter of doing anything illegal that could be connected to Biden. So nobody else on the panel touched the premature defense, and it ingloriously died on the table.

That was good enough, but I almost coughed up a hairball when Tapper bluntly told the shocked panelists, “I mean … Trump was right.” That’s probably as much vindication as the former President will ever get. Trump should use it in a campaign commercial or something.

? Is there trouble in Hunter land? On August 17, 2023, at the request of prosecutors (so that the charges could be re-filed later), the Court dismissed Hunter Biden’s misdemeanor tax offenses, closing United States v. Biden, the case where the judge stopped the government from giving Hunter perpetual immunity on everything illegal he’d ever done.

So far, so good.

But last week, several more of Hunter’s attorneys abruptly quit, bringing this year’s total to five departed lawyers. Attorney Joshua Levy quit in March, and Christopher Clark quit last week, saying he could be called as a witness in the dispute with the government over the failed plea negotiations.

That might be true. Or more likely, it was just a tepid gloss over Christopher’s untimely departure. To my lawyer’s ears, it sounds like an excuse. Why not wait to see whether he actually is called as a witness?

Last Friday, Hunter lawyers Brian McManus, Timothy McCarten, and Matthew Salerno — the entire Latham & Watkins firm — filed a joint motion to withdraw from representing Hunter.

You may recall the dust-up between the Court and the Latham & Watkins firm, where the Court had accused them of pretending to be lawyers for the Republican Party and successfully asking the clerk to withdraw a GOP brief. The recent round of quitting may be related to that little contretemps and fears about what the judge might do.

Hunter still has at least two other lawyers from politically well-connected law firms, so the judge will probably quickly approve the withdrawals, unless she has other sanctions in mind. The Latham & Watkins lawyers are probably sweating buckets right now, waiting to see whether the judge will let them ooze off into the sunset.

Mass lawyer departures aren’t usually a good sign. Rats off a sinking aircraft carrier, and so forth. On the other hand, it’s a unique case, so who knows?