Former New Jersey Superior Court Judge Andrew Napolitano told Newsmax on Friday that the Department of Justice does control the timing of indictments for a variety of reasons, including to "affect the public narrative."
Napolitano, a senior judicial analyst for Newsmax, was addressing the curious timing of the DOJ's nine-count indictment against Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, given his subpoena to sit for a deposition with the House Oversight Committee next week.
"Sometimes the Department of Justice does time indictments," Napolitano said on "National Report." "They can control when they come out, either to affect the public narrative or to catch the defense team off balance."
Donald Trump Jr., for one, asserted that the DOJ planned the announcement of the indictment Thursday night in order to help Biden skirt his deposition before the House panel on Wednesday.
However, more curious to Napolitano was the fact that DOJ prosecutors sought an indictment for the six misdemeanors against Biden.
"I will tell you this: it's unusual to indict somebody for a misdemeanor," Napolitano said. "First of all, a misdemeanor, which means the maximum penalty is less than a year in jail, doesn't even require an indictment. And secondly, the government usually treats the failure to pay taxes as a civil matter. They will sue you, get a judgment against you, attach the judgment to your property, and if they can, force you to sell the property.
"The serious charges, though, are income tax evasion," Napolitano said of the three felonies in the indictment. "The failure to report adequate streams of income. Those are the ones that he and his lawyers … should be worried about."
Regardless, Napolitano said this is what the other side has been waiting for from the DOJ.
"This is the indictment that Republicans have been calling for, not because they hate his father, but because they believe that there are serious evidence here of illegal activity, and he was getting favors because of who his father is," Napolitano said.
And that, he predicted, will be a cornerstone of the Biden defense.
"They're gonna make the political defense," he said. "They're going to say if his name was Hunter Jones instead of Hunter Biden, he wouldn't even be defended in this case. But it really depends on whether or not there were material misrepresentations made to the government."
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Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.
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