Mike Segar/Reuters
President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, in Wilmington, Delaware, earlier this year.
CNN
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Hunter Biden asked a judge Monday to throw out his three-count felony gun indictment, which was filed earlier this year by special counsel David Weiss.
President Joe Biden’s embattled son is challenging the indictment on several fronts, including claims that the case violates his Second Amendment rights, and a separate argument that prosecutors are reneging on a previous pledge not to charge him with gun crimes.
The gun indictment stems from a revolver Hunter Biden purchased in October 2018 and possessed for less than two weeks. He’s accused of lying on a federal form when he swore that he wasn’t using or addicted to any illegal drugs – even though he was addicted to crack cocaine at the time. He’s also accused of illegally possessing the gun.
In addition to the gun case in Delaware, Hunter Biden is also facing federal tax charges in California. Weiss sought the indictments last week after a plea deal collapsed over the summer.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers have argued for months that part of their now-defunct deal with prosecutors is actually still valid and is supposed to block Weiss from filing gun charges.
The parties had struck two intertwined deals: a “plea agreement” in which Hunter Biden would plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and a “diversion agreement” in which Weiss would drop a gun charge in two years if Hunter Biden stayed sober and out of trouble.
The tax plea deal imploded under scrutiny in July and never went into effect. The two parties signed the gun deal before the plea hearing – however, there was a line for the signature of a court probation officer, and that person never signed the paperwork. It’ll now be up to US District Judge Maryellen Noreika to decide whether it is legally binding.
“Neither the Court nor anyone else is a party to the (Diversion) Agreement,” Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote in a court filing on Monday. “The Agreement need only be approved and executed by the parties to become effective, and that has occurred.”
Hunter Biden’s team said they also believe the “sweeping immunity” in that agreement should’ve blocked Weiss from bringing “the recently filed tax charges in California.”
Hunter Biden’s lawyers also argued that the case can’t move forward because there are fatal legal problems with how the special counsel was appointed. Similar arguments were raised during special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe into then-President Donald Trump, and they were rejected.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys also argued that he is being unfairly prosecuted “for political reasons” and accused Weiss of caving to Republican pressure.
His attorneys said the bias started with Trump, who was in office when the probe began in 2018, and continues with congressional Republicans, who are now “weaponizing” the case to defeat his father in the 2024 election.
“Mr. Trump is ground zero for improper motive,” his attorneys wrote. “During his term in office, President Trump incessantly called in demagogue-like fashion on DOJ, the media, the public, and even foreign governments to target and investigate Mr. Biden.”
They argued that Trump, “extremist House Republicans” and top “far-right media” figures “made it clear that they wanted Mr. Weiss to keep this litigation alive through the presidential election (regardless of merit) and for him to bring more serious charges as a foil for the investigations and prosecutions of former President Trump.”
In their view, Weiss “buckled under political pressure,” abandoned the plea deal that his own office had proposed just a few months earlier and decided to file two indictments.
In previous court filings, Weiss pushed back against this theory, saying Hunter Biden’s arguments “fail to identify any actual evidence of bias, vindictiveness, or discriminatory intent” and “ignore an inconvenient truth” – that he wasn’t charged with any crimes when Trump was president, undermining his claims of political prosecution.
Hunter Biden’s team also publicly disclosed an email that disputes the explosive claim from House Republicans and Internal Revenue Service whistleblowers that Democratic appointees at the Justice Department stymied Weiss’ charging decisions in the criminal probe.
A Justice Department official, Brad Weinsheimer, told Hunter Biden’s lawyers in May that, “As the Attorney General has stated, U.S. Attorney Weiss has full authority to bring charges in any jurisdiction as he deems appropriate,” according to court filings.
This is contrary to the congressional testimony of the IRS agents, who said they believed Weiss lacked those authorities and was blocked by Joe Biden-appointed US attorneys from bringing charges in California and Washington, DC.
The viability of the gun possession charge is already in question. A federal appeals court previously struck down the law, which says illegal drug users can’t own firearms.
That ruling in August only applies to Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi – but it puts the statute on shaky ground and could tee up the Supreme Court to invalidate it nationwide.
The New Orleans-based appeals court based its unanimous decision on a landmark June 2022 Supreme Court case that expanded the reach of the Second Amendment.
“Persons protected by the Second Amendment can no longer be denied gun ownership due simply to past drug use — a practice inconsistent with this nation’s historical tradition on firearm regulation,” Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote in a court filing on Monday.
They argued that it’s “inevitable” the Supreme Court will invalidate the law, and that the false-statement charges are also improper because they’re based on the same theory.
This story has been updated with additional information.
