Attorney Chris Clark said that if President Biden testified against his own Department of Justice (DOJ), it would cause a “constitutional crisis.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyers once told authorities that President Biden would be called a fact witness for the defense if his son were ever charged with a crime.
In a letter to investigators in October 2022, Biden’s lawyer at the time, Chris Clark, made the claim. This was right after word got out that the Justice Department had enough proof against the first son to move forward with a charge.
Clark warned that the president would have to testify if the DOJ did bring charges against Hunter for buying a gun while he was high on cocaine.
“President Biden would now unquestionably be a fact witness for the defense in any criminal trial,” Clark wrote in a 32-page letter that Politico got a hold of.
Clark quit Hunter’s defense team last week, but it’s unclear if this had anything to do with the paper leaked to Politico.
Late in July, Hunter pleaded not guilty to federal tax and gun charges after an earlier plea deal fell through. Republicans had said that the last sale was way too easy on criminals.
In the letter, Clark tried to keep the DOJ from charging him by saying that Biden might testify against him. He said that if a criminal hearing went forward, Biden would have to speak against the wishes of his own Justice Department. This, he said, would cause a “constitutional crisis.”
Clark wrote, “This case, more than any other, doesn’t justify the spectacle of a sitting president testifying in a criminal trial or the possibility of a Constitutional crisis that would follow.”
Last week, when Clark quit being Hunter’s lawyer, he said that being called as a witness was the main reason.
In his request to remove, Clark cited the Delaware Rule of Professional Conduct, which says, “A lawyer shall not act as an advocate at a trial in which the lawyer is likely to be a necessary witness, unless… disqualification of the lawyer would work substantial hardship on the client.”
“Recent events suggest that the negotiation and writing of the plea agreement and diversion agreement will be contested, and Mr. Clark is an eyewitness to these issues,” the filing said.
Hunter Biden was supposed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax counts of willfully failing to pay federal income tax as part of a plea deal that would have kept him out of jail on a felony gun charge.
Judge Maryellen Noreika of the United States District Court for the District of Delaware did not agree to the terms of the deal. She said it was illegal, “not standard,” and “different from what I usually see.”