Hunter Biden’s defense team wants the Department of Justice to turn over documents on its decision to change course and charge President Joe Biden‘s son for gun crimes, arguing the evidence will force a judge to dismiss the case.
Hunter Biden asked U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika in court filings this week to toss the criminal indictment immediately. But if that effort fails, he wants the court to compel the DOJ to release documents on the behind-the-scenes deliberations on charging the first son.
Hunter Biden’s team argues those documents would help prove to the judge that the case must be dismissed because it was tainted by political pressure.
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Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell wrote the discovery requests, asking, among numerous items, for any communications within the DOJ “concerning the investigation and decisions to bring or not to bring charges from October 12, 2018 to the present.” Lowell asked prosecutors directly for the items in October and November to no avail, he said.
Defense attorneys argued in their filings this week that if a judge needed further evidence that the case should be dismissed, those and other discovery items would help solidify their claim that special counsel David Weiss selectively and vindictively prosecuted Hunter Biden and that the prosecution violated the separation of powers.
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The discovery requests have thus far been met with a stiff response, defense attorneys wrote.
They said that they asked prosecutors in a call on Dec. 1 for a status update on providing the requested materials and that Weiss’s team responded that they would “let the discovery stand for itself.”
Hunter Biden filed several motions this week to dismiss his case, which Weiss brought against him in Delaware in September over allegations he lied on a federal form in 2018 about his drug addiction so that he could purchase a revolver.
Days ago, Weiss also charged Hunter Biden in a nine-count indictment over tax allegations unrelated to the gun incident.
But, according to one of Hunter Biden’s motions to dismiss the Delaware case, Weiss initially had no intention of charging him at all, and Lesley Wolf, an assistant U.S. attorney in Weiss’s office, had planned in May 2023 to draft an agreement with Hunter Biden that involved no charges or plea.
Weiss, however, changed his mind about the plea deal twice that month, defense attorneys wrote, before he reached an agreement to have Hunter Biden plead guilty to two tax misdemeanors and enter a diversion agreement to avoid one felony gun charge. Defense attorneys said Weiss then reneged on the plea deal altogether and argued that it transformed, incredibly, into two indictments comprising six felonies and six misdemeanors despite no evidence in the case changing.
Lowell wrote to Weiss’s team that “the only thing that appears to have changed is that these Republicans in Congress and other partisans have loudly criticized your Office’s prior efforts to resolve this matter.”
“The facts of Mr. Weiss’s high-profile flip-flop speak for themselves, and the fact that he traded his own judgment for the judgment of President Biden’s political enemies is not lost on anyone,” defense attorneys wrote.
They also gave credit to a pair of IRS criminal investigators involved in the Hunter Biden case, saying they successfully pressured Weiss to bring more serious charges.
The investigators came forward to Congress in May with their concerns that the case had been slow-walked and plagued by political interference. They handed over to the House Ways and Means Committee hundreds of pages of records related to the investigation, and the committee published in June transcriptions of their testimonies detailing their allegations against Weiss and the DOJ.
The whistleblowers’ testimonies jumpstarted Republicans’ investigation into alleged DOJ improprieties in the case, and GOP lawmakers have since been vocal about accusations that the DOJ extended Hunter Biden preferential treatment.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys argued that constituted a separation of powers violation, saying, “This unprecedented disclosure of case materials for an active investigation, followed by the purported ‘whistleblowers’ public media campaign, prompted further congressional investigation, and Mr. Weiss seemingly decided an agreement deferring the tax charges was no longer politically palatable.”
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The defense attorneys said congressional Republicans’ constant focus on Hunter Biden is “ludicrous and shameless behavior” and that it “would be comical if it were not so deeply unfair to Mr. Biden, embarrassing to the country, and offensive to the concept of justice.”
“It is overwhelmingly clear that nothing the Justice Department could charge Mr. Biden with, no matter how unjustified, would satisfy these officials,” they wrote.
