And hey, no one knows a deal like Hunter Biden, right? Give the man credit — when he got bought, he stayed bought. Hunter may have learned that at the knee of the Big Guy, after all.

Unfortunately for Hunter, his deal with prosecutors apparently has fallen completely apart. In a court filing last night, Hunter’s attorneys complained that prosecutor-turned-special-counsel “renege[d]” on a plea deal that was so suspect that a federal judge refused to accept it. Their filing contends that Weiss more or less dictated the terms to them, rather than the other way around — and they want it reinstated:

Hunter Biden’s legal team said late Sunday the Justice Department had decided to “renege on the previously agreed-upon plea agreement,” escalating a dispute that is threatening to become a factor in the 2024 presidential race as President Biden seeks re-election. …

In the three-page filing Sunday, the younger Biden’s legal team provided more details about the talks, saying prosecutors had proposed and “largely dictated” the language in the plea agreement and a separate deal to resolve a gun charge.

That included language that said the U.S. wouldn’t criminally prosecute Biden further over the conduct at issue in either the tax or gun cases, a provision which Biden understood to mean the investigation was over. The agreement, now public, said it didn’t cover any future conduct by Biden or by any of his affiliated businesses.

At the July hearing, prosecutors instead revealed they continued to investigate Hunter Biden, including in connection with possible foreign-lobbying charges related to his work for foreign clients, which had been at issue in the tax counts.

Er … how smart is this? It’s very clear that Weiss and Merrick Garland desperately want to bury this matter as quietly as possible. The first attempt at the plea deal makes that crystal clear; that’s why House Oversight Committee members raised such a stink about it both before and after the deal got made. Chair James Comer specifically and publicly warned the Department of Justice not to cut a deal before the Oversight investigation finished, because they had uncovered an archipelago of LLCs that had filtered millions in payments to the Bidens from all sorts of foreign sources. Weiss cut the deal anyway, only to have Oversight embarrass him and the DoJ.

After that, Weiss had no choice but to tell the judge that his team would continue to investigate Hunter, but who was that fooling? Garland’s appointment of Weiss isn’t intended to get tougher with Hunter and the Bidens; it’s intended to salvage the plea deal in some form, keep Hunter out of prison, and quash any more efforts to pry open the Bidens’ bank records. Making a bigger spectacle of this by complaining about welching on the ridiculously lenient deal will only keep drawing more attention to it.

Besides, it wasn’t Weiss who reneged on the deal. The judge rejected it, an uncommon step prompted by the absurdity of its terms. Garland and Weiss almost certainly want to try again, only this time perhaps with a new judge and a new status for Weiss that makes a dressed-up version of the old plea deal more credible.

Nonetheless, Hunter’s attorneys continue to insist that the deal is unbreakable, especially in its most ridiculous aspect:

In a court filing Sunday, Hunter Biden’s lawyers said they believe their deal with Weiss to resolve a felony gun charge is still “valid and binding,” though it’s unclear if Weiss agrees with their interpretation. …

But in their view, the gun deal was fully “executed” when it was signed by both parties and presented to a federal judge at a court hearing last month in Delaware. A copy of the deal that was previously posted to the docket was signed by Hunter Biden, his attorney Chris Clark and federal prosecutor Leo Wise – but the line for a signature from a probation officer is blank.

They also said it was the prosecutors – not them – who crafted the two intertwining agreements that District Judge Maryellen Noreika balked at during the hearing, which ended after she said she wasn’t ready to accept the deals.

It was the deal on the weapons charge that created the most controversy, at least initially. Joe Biden keeps demanding more gun-control laws and stiffer prosecution, but his DoJ gave Hunter a pass on a charge that they routinely prosecute and imprison others so charged. That got Noreika’s attention too, as she balked at the idea that the courts should end up in the position of deciding whether to refile the gun charge if Weiss’ “diversion program” didn’t work.

One can understand why Hunter and his attorneys feel frustrated at the recent turn of events, but not why they keep drawing attention to them. The more that happens, the less wiggle room Weiss, Garland, and Joe Biden have. Whining to a court about having a sweetheart deal canceled by a judge seems pretty self-defeating when both the defense and the DoJ are on the same side.