Hunter Biden's legal team is in trouble and could face sanctions after attempting to manipulate the trial facing the U.S. president's son. Specifically, one of his lawyers is accused of "misrepresenting her identity" during a call to the court in charge of the case in an attempt to have documents that could be damaging to Hunter Biden removed from court records.
It all started Tuesday morning when Delaware District Judge Maryellen Noreika received an amicus curiae brief from the House Ways and Means Committee. This report included the transcribed testimony of two IRS whistleblowers who were interviewed on May 26 and June 1 and was to be sent to the Court by providing valid arguments for the trial against Joe Biden's son.
In the letter, The New York Post explains, Hunter was said to have benefited from a "political interference which calls into question the propriety of the investigation" and had used it to commit alleged crimes, including felony tax evasion, failure to register as a foreign agent, and even money laundering.
'Amicus curiae' brief disappears from the record
In principle, the documents were included and were to be part of the evidence at trial. But mysteriously, during Tuesday afternoon, they disappeared from the file. This was explained by the committee's lead attorney, Theodore Kittila, during a letter sent to the judge in charge of the case to which the NY Post had access:
At approximately 1:30 p.m., we received word that our filing was removed from the docket. We promptly contacted the Clerk’s office, and we were advised that someone contacted the Court representing that they worked with my office and that they were asking the Court to remove this from the docket. We immediately advised that this was inaccurate. The Clerk’s Office responded that we would need to re-file. We have done so now.
Kittila began to investigate what could have happened and soon discovered that a lawyer on Hunter Biden's team, Jessica Bengels, "misrepresented her identity" and claimed to be part of Mr. Kittila's team. She did so in an "attempt to improperly convince the Clerk's Office to remove the amicus materials from the docket," Kittila described in an email that was summarized in Noreika's order:
Mr. Kittila asserts that an individual associated with the firm representing Defendant called the Clerk's Office pretending to be associated with Mr. Kittila and requested the 'amicus' materials be removed from the docket, which the Clerk's Office did,
Hunter Biden's team claims it was a misunderstanding
After discovering the deception, Noreika temporarily sealed the document and gave Bengels a deadline of 9:30 p.m. Tuesday to explain what had happened. Half an hour before the deadline, the lawyer filed an affidavit in which she assured that it was all a misunderstanding:
I am completely confident that I never indicated that I was calling from Mr. Kittila’s firm or that I worked with him in any way. The only mention of his name was when [the clerk] had asked me if the filings had been entered by Mr. Kittila’s firm and I answered that I believed that to be the case.
Shortly thereafter, Hunter's legal team submitted a letter to the judge confirming that it was all about a miscommunication between Bengels and the employee who received the call. In addition, they said, they hoped that the attached statement would serve to dispel any doubts:
We have no idea how the misunderstanding occurred, but our understanding is there was no misrepresentation. We hope this letter and the attached declaration dispels any suggestion that undersigned counsel or our staff would ever intentionally misrepresent or mislead the Court with respect to any matter.
