Special Counsel Asks Judge To Keep Hunter Biden’s Indictment on the Books Despite Pardon, Denounces ‘Baseless’ Claims of Prosecutorial Bias

Special Counsel David Weiss is seeking to have at least one of Hunter Biden’s indictments stay on the record to make clear that, while he will escape punishment, Mr. Biden is far from an innocent man. Mr. Weiss is also pushing back hard at the argument made by the younger Mr. Biden’s legal team — and by President Biden himself on Sunday evening — that the prosecution was political.In a 10-page legal filing sent to a federal judge on Monday, Mr. Weiss’s top prosecutors slammed the first son’s legal team for insisting that the justice system was weaponized against the first family. While Mr. Weiss’ filing did not mention that the elder Mr. Biden made the same allegations, his rebuttal reads like a direct shot at the White House.Mr. Biden granted his son a “A Full and Unconditional Pardon” from his father covering all potential criminal activity between January 1, 2014 and December 1, 2024. In a statement accompanying that pardon, the president said his child “was singled out only because he is my son.”With the pardon in hand, the first son’s defense attorneys swiftly filed a motion to dismiss Mr. Biden’s indictment in California for tax evasion between 2016 and 2019 — crimes to which Mr. Biden pled guilty on the eve of his trial back in September. In their response filing, Mr. Weiss’s deputies say the indictment should not be dismissed, and that Mr. Biden should simply receive an administrative order that terminates him as the defendant in the California case. “Defense counsel asserted, without any legal support that, ‘a Full and Unconditional Pardon … requires dismissal of the Indictment against him,’ and further that the pardon ‘requires an automatic dismissal of the Indictment with prejudice,’” prosecutors Leo Wise and Derek Hines write, citing Mr. Biden’s attorney’s filing. “Defense counsel misrepresents the law. Nothing requires the dismissal of the indictment in this case.”Messrs. Wise and Hines cite a number of cases in which defendants were issued pardons by presidents, who ultimately do not have their indictment dismissed out of hand; rather, the individuals themselves are administratively terminated as defendants in the case. Steve Bannon — a former White House aide who received a pardon from President Trump — did not have his indictment dismissed after being granted relief, Mr. Weiss’s prosecutors pointed out in their Monday filing. Messrs. Wise and Hines cited more than half-a-dozen other criminal cases where defendants had pardons granted, only to have their indictments remain in place. The two prosecutors also cited a decision by a federal judge at the District of Columbia, who wrote: “An indictment establishes probable cause that the accused has committed a crime. Guilt can be established only by a much higher standard, proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Because a pardon does not blot out guilt or expunge a judgment of conviction, one can conclude that a pardon does not blot out probable cause of guilt or expunge an indictment.”Messrs. Wise and Hines also took issue with both the younger Biden’s and his father’s assertions that the first son was prosecuted only because of his last name. The presiding judge in the California tax prosecution, Judge Mark Scarsi, ruled against Mr. Biden on eight occasions when his attorneys moved for dismissal of the indictment because, they argued, the first son was being vindictively prosecuted. “There was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case. The defendant made similar baseless accusations in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” Messrs. Wise and Hines say. The two men then cite Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee who presided over Mr. Biden’s other criminal prosecution for buying a firearm while addicted to crack cocaine. Judge Noreika similarly ruled against multiple motions for dismissal by the defense when they argued that Mr. Biden was being punished by what they characterized as a biased, weaponized, and politicized Justice Department. “The Executive Branch that charged Defendant is headed by that sitting President — Defendant’s father. The Attorney General heading the DOJ was appointed by and reports to Defendant’s father. And that Attorney General appointed the Special Counsel who made the challenged charging decision in this case — while Defendant’s father was still the sitting President,” Judge Noreika wrote in April. “Defendant’s claim is effectively that his own father targeted him for being his son, a claim that is nonsensical under the facts here,” she added. The prosecution argues to Judge Scarsi that, for the sake of justice and fairness, Mr. Biden should not have his tax indictment dismissed just because he received a pardon. “The Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred,” Messrs. Wise and Hines write. “It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive.”

Special Counsel Asks Judge To Keep Hunter Biden’s Indictment on the Books Despite Pardon, Denounces ‘Baseless’ Claims of Prosecutorial Bias

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