Lawyers representing President Joe Biden’s son filed the separate motions in federal courts in Delaware, where he was convicted last month of three felony gun offenses, and in California, where he’s expected to go on trial this fall for nine alleged tax crimes.
This is the latest fallout from Cannon’s shock ruling, which found that the Justice Department special counsel who prosecuted Trump was unconstitutionally appointed and unlawfully funded. That special counsel, Jack Smith, is appealing the decision.
A separate special counsel, David Weiss, has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018 and brought the separate gun and tax indictments against him last year. Biden denies wrongdoing in both matters and claims he’s being politically targeted.
In court filings Thursday, Biden said Weiss was pursuing “an unauthorized prosecution” and that his gun convictions were “a miscarriage of justice.” For the tax charges, he demanded the same treatment as Trump, whose case was dismissed.
“The defect has been recognized and used to invalidate an indictment brought by the Special Counsel against former President Trump, the equivalent result should be available to Mr. Biden,” Biden’s lawyers wrote regarding his tax indictment.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss and Smith as special counsels under a process that has been repeatedly challenged in court and deemed proper by federal judges across the country, until Cannon’s ruling Monday. In fact, Hunter Biden tried but failed to get the gun and tax cases thrown out based on similar arguments.
Reviving those arguments, Hunter Biden cited momentum from Trump-appointee Cannon and conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. Ironically, while Hunter Biden champions their rulings, many of his father’s allies have condemned them.
“The Attorney General relied upon the exact same authority to appoint the Special Counsel in both the Trump and Biden matters, and both appointments are invalid for the same reason,” Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote in court filings Thursday in the gun case.
When the president’s son previously raised similar arguments, Weiss’ team said his theories were meritless and that their office was structured in legally sound fashion. A spokesperson for special counsel Smith said Monday that Cannon’s decision “deviates from the uniform conclusion of all previous courts to have considered the issue.”
Cannon’s ruling was also quickly picked up by Alexander Smirnov, an ex-FBI informant who was indicted by Weiss for allegedly peddling fabricated claims to the FBI about Ukrainian bribery schemes involving Joe and Hunter Biden. Smirnov’s lawyers similarly cited Cannon as part of a new attempt to get his case tossed. He pleaded not guilty.
At his gun trial, Hunter Biden was found guilty of buying and possessing a gun while abusing illegal drugs. The tax charges are based on what Weiss called a “four-year scheme to not pay at least $1.4 million,” from income from his foreign business deals.
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Source: CNN.com
