Hunter Biden's lawyer said Justice Department prosecutors wanted the president's son to avoid trial on tax charges, and he suggested they might still work out a plea deal to save Biden from facing trial.
"We were trying to avoid [a trial] all along," Biden's lawyer Abbe Lowell said in a CBS News interview on Sunday. "And so were the prosecutors who came forward to us and were the ones to say, 'Can there be a resolution short of a prosecution?' So they wanted it and maybe they still do want it."
Biden and the DOJ initially agreed to a plea deal that would have seen the first son dodge prison time for tax and gun charges. But U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika last month rejected the proposed plea deal, raising concerns over its legality and the scope of immunity it offered Biden.
Lawyers for Biden said in a late Sunday court filing that prosecutors reneged on the plea deal, days after the prosecutors said Biden may be headed for a criminal trial.
Lowell in the CBS interview said a trial for the first son is "not inevitable."
The case has become a political lightning rod as Republicans in Congress raise the possibility of impeaching President Joe Biden over his son's business dealings and accuse the Department of Justice of giving him a "sweetheart deal."
(Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru and Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman, Robert Birsel)