Any hope that Hunter Biden and his attorneys had of reviving their plea deal with the United States Department of Justice is officially dead.
CNN reports that special counsel David Weiss has rejected arguments made by Biden's attorneys last week that the plea deal was still valid even after U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika shot it down last month.
As CNN notes, Weiss is arguing that the deal would have been valid if Margaret Bray, the chief United States probation officer for the District of Delaware, had signed off on it -- which she did not.
"In sum, because Ms. Bray, acting in her capacity as the Chief United States Probation Officer, did not approve the now-withdrawn diversion agreement, it never went into effect and, therefore, none of its terms are binding on either party," wrote prosecutors.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland this past Friday approved Weiss's request to become special counsel after Weiss told him that it was necessary to continue the government's prosecution of Biden after the original plea agreement, which Republicans in Congress had attacked as a "sweetheart deal" collapsed.
Biden had initially agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of tax evasion and to enter a diversion agreement on one felony count of being a drug user in possession of a firearm.