Hunter Biden will tentatively head to trial in early June over allegations he illegally purchased a firearm in 2018, a federal judge in Delaware said Wednesday.
Judge Maryellen Noreika said during a conference call that the trial would have an approximate start date of June 3, but she cautioned that pending motions and Biden’s other, unrelated trial in California, which is set to begin at the end of June, could affect that.
The parties agreed that the trial in the gun case would take about one week. A prosecutor for special counsel David Weiss had asked for a May trial, while Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said that if his client “were ever to have to go forward” with a trial, then early June would be acceptable.
Weiss charged the first son last September with three felonies, alleging he lied on a gun form about his drug use to purchase a revolver and that he then retained the firearm unlawfully for several days.
Biden pleaded not guilty to the charges and has asked Noreika to dismiss them. The judge has not yet ruled on his dismissal requests but indicated Wednesday that she would decide on them soon.
“We’re going to get something out as soon as we can. I haven’t completely figured out what I’m going to do with all of them, but we’re working on them,” Noreika said.
Biden’s defense team had asked for the case to be dismissed for several reasons, but his attorney Lowell said Wednesday that one in particular, his argument about a now-withdrawn plea deal, was the most pressing.
Defense attorneys filed a similar motion to dismiss tax-related charges in Biden’s case in California, but Lowell told Noreika, who had presided over a hearing about the plea deal last summer, that she “should be the one to decide” on it.
“You were there,” Lowell said to Noreika. “The contract laws, such as it exists, arises in Delaware, and it makes more sense than if that wasn’t the case, and without gilding my own lily, I’ll just say that it is something that I’d be very surprised — given you and all the work you’re doing — you would disagree with us on that one.”
Noreika last July called into question certain provisions of the plea deal, which included a separate agreement that would have allowed Biden to avoid prosecution for the gun incident. The deal unraveled after the hearing, leading Weiss to indict Biden instead. Lowell has since argued that even though Noreika did not approve the separate agreement last summer, it had still been executed after Weiss signed off on it.
Noreika told Lowell she would pull Biden’s plea deal motion to the “front of the line,” ahead of the three other motions to dismiss that defense attorneys had filed.
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A prosecutor on the call dismissed Lowell’s remarks as “advocacy” and noted that the conference call topic was related to a trial schedule.
Biden’s trial in California is scheduled for June 20. Lowell said Wednesday he expected that one to last several weeks, into mid- or late July.
