NICE TO HAVE A COMPETENT DOJ:

The court papers indicate the younger Biden has tentatively agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges of failure to pay in 2017 and 2018. The combined tax liability is roughly $1.2 million over those years, according to people familiar with the plea deal, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe details of the agreement that are not yet public. Prosecutors plan to recommend a sentence of probation for those counts, these people said. Biden's representatives have said he previously paid back the IRS what he owed.

In a letter filed in federal court in Wilmington on Tuesday, federal prosecutors said they were filing two documents called criminal informations -- typically used in cases in which a defendant has agreed to plead guilty.

"The defendant has agreed to plead guilty to both counts of the tax Information," the prosecutors wrote. The second criminal information is about the gun charge. In that case, the letter says, "The defendant has agreed to enter a Pretrial Diversion Agreement with respect to the firearm Information."

Handling the gun charge as a diversion case means Biden will not technically be pleading guilty to that crime. Diversion is an option typically applied to nonviolent offenders with substance abuse problems.

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