Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast today is Thursday, July 27th.

2023. I am John Pudhord. It's the editor of commentary magazine with me as always,

executive editor, a Greenwald Hyde, Hyde John, media commentary columnist, Christine Rose

and Hyde Christine, Washington commentary columnist, Matthew Kahnetti. Hi, Matt. Hyde John,

and man who needs no introduction joining us today to give us the benefit of his decades of wisdom

about federal prosecutions, criminal prosecutions, courtroom procedure, and political scandal,

our friend Andy Andrew C. McCarthy of National Review. Hi, Andy. Thanks for joining us.

Hi, John. It's a pleasure. So we immediately thought upon reading about the high jinks yesterday

in a Delaware courtroom of asking Andy to join us because there is literally no one in America

who is better at describing legal procedure as it is happening in real time. You have many other

gifts and many other wonderful qualities and many other sterling analytical talents. But I don't

know that I know of anybody that one could say, if I'm thinking to myself, what the hell happened

in that courtroom in Delaware where they were just supposed to rubber stamp the plea agreement

that Hunter Biden reached with the Justice Department and the U.S. Attorney in Delaware and it

all blew up. In front of the mainstream media, people like Glenn Thrush of the New York Times

who went, what? How is this? Andy, first of all, what happened is Hunter Biden's lawyers,

the judge in the case said, am I going to read this as saying that if this goes through,

that Hunter Biden is now shielded from prosecution on all matters relating to everything that is

in this plea deal and the U.S. Attorney, the government said, no, you should not read it that way.

The investigation is ongoing and Hunter's lawyers said, what? Uh-uh. No, we thought everything is

covered by this and that he's out of the woods and we're putting clothes, we're closing this off.

We're reneging on the deal. He's going to plead not guilty. Do I have that sequence right?

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