A person affiliated with Hunter Biden's legal team reportedly misrepresented herself on the eve of his court appearance in a telephone call to the clerk at the U.S. District Court in Delaware to have information related to IRS whistleblowers removed from the case record.
The court's clerk said Jessica Bengels, a litigation services director at Latham and Watkins in New York, where Biden attorney Chris Clark was formerly a partner, contacted the clerk Tuesday and asked to remove amicus brief materials connected to the case, The Epoch Times reported.
In a letter Tuesday to U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, Theodore Kittila of the law firm Halloran Farkas + Kittila, which filed an amicus brief on behalf of Rep. Jason Smith, R-Mo., chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, wrote the clerk's office had "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."
The amicus brief asked that Noreika set aside Biden's plea deal because he received preferential treatment from the Department of Justice, based on the testimony of two IRS whistleblowers. As it turned out, Biden's plea deal unraveled and he pleaded not guilty to two misdemeanor charges of tax evasion.
Noreika gave Biden's attorneys until 9 p.m. Tuesday to provide an explanation. Noreika's order said, "the caller misrepresented her identity and who she worked for in an attempt to improperly convince the clerk's office to remove the amicus materials from the docket."
According to court records, Bengels submitted an affidavit Tuesday in which she blamed miscommunication among the clerks for the removal of the amicus brief.
"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," she said. "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."
The court temporarily placed the document under seal until the close of business Wednesday "to afford defendant the opportunity to try to make the requisite showing. Should defendant fail to make that showing, the document will be unsealed in its entirety."
According to court records, Biden's legal team filed a motion Wednesday to keep the document sealed. It is not known when Noreika will rule on the motion.
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