The judge overseeing Hunter Biden's plea deal reportedly torched the first son during his court appearance Wednesday.

[...]

Noreika refused the initial plea deal to his tax misdemeanor charges agreed upon by the Department of Justice and Biden's legal team, leading to a revised plea deal.

"We did hear a little bit about part of these charges that he's pleading to is when he had told the judge he was already sober and she said to him, 'You were sober, so why didn't you pay your taxes?' and he essentially said he had just become sober, his life was an enormous mess, he was trying to pick up the pieces and put it together, and that essentially fell through the cracks," Scannell said.

Noreika refused to sign onto the plea deal arguing the agreement between prosecutors with the Justice Department and the defense legal team did not clarify whether the Department of Justice (DOJ) could prosecute Biden for other crimes.

The Justice Department announced June 20 that Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges, while a felony charge of lying on the form filled out when purchasing a firearm would be addressed via a pre-trial diversion program. Biden pleaded not guilty to all charges after the plea deal collapsed when United States District Judge Maryellen Noreika rejected both the initial plea deal and a more limited revision Wednesday.

"Hunter Biden's plea deal falls apart in the courtroom," Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on Twitter. "His attorneys shouldn't have lied to the clerk of the court."

A lawyer on Hunter Biden's team allegedly posed as a Republican lawyer for the House Ways and Means Committee to remove a brief that included testimony from IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Zeigler about interference from the Justice Department with the probe into Biden, according to the New York Post.

"Today District Judge Noreika did the right thing by refusing to rubberstamp Hunter Biden's sweetheart plea deal," Republican Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, tweeted. "But let's be clear: Hunter's sweetheart plea deal belongs in the trash. The DOJ must be held accountable for its Biden family coverup."

"It's now being reported that the Hunter Biden plea deal is off for now," Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado posted on Twitter. "Justice must be served. No special outs for this crook!"

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PUTIN: "We are witnessing a paradox. On the one hand, the West seeks to block our grain and fertiliser exports, while accusing us of the current crisis on the global food market. This is outright hypocrisy. ... in almost a year since this so-called deal was concluded, a total of 32.8 million tonnes were exported from Ukraine, of which over 70 percent ended up in high-income and above-average income countries, while countries like Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and several others received less than 3 percent of this total, or under 1 million tonnes.

Among other things, the reason Russia agreed to take part in this so-called deal was because it contained commitments to lift the illegitimate obstacles for supplying our grain and fertilisers to the global market. Make no mistake, this is what helping the poorest countries is all about.

However, nothing of what was agreed upon or what we were promised materialised - none of the conditions related to lifting the sanctions against the exports of Russian grain and fertilisers to the global markets have been fulfilled. Not a single one of them. We even faced obstacles when trying to deliver mineral fertilisers to the poorest countries that need them for free, as we have just discussed during the meeting with the leadership of the African Union.

We managed to send only two shipments - just 20,000 tonnes to Malawi and 34,000 tonnes to Kenya, of the 262,000 tonnes of these fertilisers blocked in European ports. All the rest remained in the hands of the Europeans, even though this initiative was purely humanitarian in nature, which means that it should not have been exposed to any sanctions, as a matter of principle. Ok, some may not want Russia to enrich itself, as they say, and use its revenue for military aims. Fine. But these were free shipments! But no, they would not let them through, despite all this empty talk about their desire to help the poorest countries. Considering these facts, we refused to extend this would-be deal.

As I have already said, Russia can well fill in the gap left by the withdrawal of the Ukrainian grain from the global market, either by selling its grain or by transferring it for free to the neediest countries in Africa, especially considering that this year we once again expect to have a record-high harvest. To be more specific, let me say that in the next few months, next three to four months, we will be ready to provide, free of charge, a supply of 25,000-50,000 tonnes of grain each to Burkina Faso, Zimbabwe, Mali, Somalia, the Central African Republic and Eritrea, delivered at no cost.

A few more figures will probably be of interest. Ukraine produced about 55 million tonnes of grain in the past agricultural year. Exports amounted to 47 million tonnes: quite a lot, including 17 million tonnes of wheat. And Russia, colleagues, harvested 156 million tonnes of grain last year. It exported 60 million tonnes, of which 48 million tonnes was wheat.

Russia's share of the world wheat market is 20 percent, Ukraine's is less than five per cent. This means that it is Russia that makes a significant contribution to global food security and is a solid, responsible international supplier of agricultural products. And those who claim that this is not the case, that it is only to secure the so-called grain deal to export Ukrainian grain, are simply twisting the facts and telling untruths. As a matter of fact, this has been the practice of some Western countries for decades, if not centuries."