A federal judge in Los Angeles rejected, on Monday, April 1, a request from Hunter Biden to dismiss the tax charges against him. In the dismissal of the eight motions regarding the matter, US District Judge Marc Scarsi rejected the claim of Hunter and his legal team that these charges were only brought because the lead prosecutor, special counsel David Weiss, was improperly appointed and only brought charges because of a pressure campaign from the right after the details of Hunter’s attempted plea deal came out.
As background, a plea deal negotiated by Hunter and his legal team with the DOJ would have led to immunity for him on both tax charges and a slew of gun charges. However, after details of it emerged, conservative politicians and outlets sounded off, with the DOJ eventually dropping the deal and appointing a special prosecutor.
Hunter now faces legal liability on both the gun and tax charges. The tax charges were brought in December of 2023, with the DOJ claiming that Hunter willfully failed to both file tax returns on time and pay his taxes. They also allee that he filed fraudulent tax forms and illegally evaded taxes. Biden’s team accepts that he was late in paying taxes, but claims he paid them in full with both penalties and interest. That trial is set to begin in June of 2024, with jury selection starting on June 20.
Hunter’s main defense, however, is that the plea deal he signed with the DOJ is valid because he and the DOJ signed it, and that it was only revoked because of political pressure from Republicans. Scarsi, a Trump-appointed judge, disagreed.
For one, though the DOJ and Hunter signed the plea deal form, the probation officer had pointedly refused to sign it, so that signature line was blank. Further, Scarsi wrote that the motion claiming the revocation was based in political retribution deserved dismissal because the supposed evidence cited by Biden’s legal team was only composed of news articles that proved nothing about the supposed political pressure.
Judge Scarsi wrote, “Defendant provides no facts indicating that the Government undertook charging decisions in any respect because of public statements by politicians, let alone based on Defendant’s familial and political affiliations.” While he acknowledged that GOP politicians claimed credit, he said, “But politicians take credit for many things over which they have no power and have made no impact,” so that evidence was not dispositive.
Further, Judge Scarsi found that the mere fact that IRS whistleblowers said Hunter’s indictment was a “vindication” of their testimony meant nothing, much less that their conduct influenced the prosecutor. “[P]ublicly taking credit for a prosecution hardly proves the boaster’s conduct had any effect on the presumably independent prosecutor,” he wrote.
Hunter’s lead attorney, Abbe Lowell, indicated that Hunter’s legal team could challenge the court’s decision, saying, “We strongly disagree with the Court’s decision and will continue to vigorously pursue Mr. Biden’s challenges to the abnormal way the Special Counsel handled this investigation and charged this case.”
Watch FNC’s Jesse Watters comment on the ruling here:
Featured image credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hunter_Biden_and_Abbe_Lowell_in_2023.jpg
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