Hunter Biden suffered a major legal setback this week after a federal judge rejected his plea agreement on tax and gun charges. 

According to CNN, U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika asked whether the defense and prosecution agreed that the deal would provide Biden with immunity from a host of other criminal offenses he has been suspected of committing.

Disagreement over what deal covered

While the defense said that it did, federal prosecutors denied this was so while adding that a criminal investigation is still ongoing.

Noreika declared that she could not "accept the plea agreement today" as there was no "meeting of the minds." What's more, she noted that the gun charge agreement was "not straightforward" and contained "atypical provisions."

Following the collapse of Biden's deal, Former Assistant United States Attorney Andrew McCarthy and Florida Republican Rep. Greg Steube both appeared on Fox Business and discussed its implications.

McCarthy says deal would have "been outrageous to the public"

"The reason there is no indictment is the same reason that the parties couldn't answer the question today when they were asked what was being agreed to," McCarthy explained.

"Because the reason you have a plea agreement is to lay out what the defendant has immunity from by taking the plea," he continued.

"And in this instance, what they would have to lay out is not only the tax charges for those five tax years, some of which they already let the statute of limitations lapse on, but anything that arises out of that," McCarthy pointed out.

He stressed that this would include "money laundering, foreign agent registration Foreign Agents Registration Act, bribery, conspiracy."

"You'd have to lay all of that out, and the reason they didn't is because it would have been outrageous to the public if they had laid out what Hunter understood he was getting immunity from," McCarthy stressed.

Congressman says deal is more evidence DOJ has been "weaponized and politicized"

"So what they did was they drafted a vague agreement so Hunter could walk away saying he understood that the case was closed as far as he's concerned and then if you asked the Justice Department, 'Well, what's the ambit of this?' they would say, 'Can't answer that--it's a continuing investigation," the former assistant U.S. attorney pointed out.

For his part, Steube agreed that the failed deal was "a political exercise" which illustrated how the Department of Justice (DOJ) has been "weaponized and politicized."

"We've shown that, just with the IRS whistleblowers that were before the Ways and Means Committee who testified that the DOJ slow-walked certain crimes in 2014 and 2015 so that the statute of limitations would toll," he recalled.

"We should not have one standard of justice for the Biden family and a completely different standard of justice for the American people," he concluded.