A U.S. district court judge denied eight motions filed by Hunter Biden’s legal team that sought to dismiss the federal tax evasion case against him, or parts of it, saying of one of the motions that Biden filed it “without any evidence.”
President Joe Biden’s son has pleaded not guilty to the three felony and six misdemeanor tax charges filed against him by special counsel David Weiss last year.
In this most recent decision, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi tossed out eight arguments Hunter Biden’s team had made in an attempt to get their client off the hook during what looks increasingly like a difficult election year for his father, NBC News reported Monday.
George Washington law professor Jonathan Turley described the judge’s decision as a “stinging rebuke.”
Turley summed up Scarsi’s decision as coming down to one key issue: “[T]he defense omits one thing from its argument: actual evidence.”
Indeed, as NBC noted, the judge did use language that sounded much like that, at least in regard to one motion to dismiss that essentially argued that Hunter Biden had been targeted by his father’s political enemies.
Scarsi wrote that that Hunter Biden’s legal team “fail[ed] to present a reasonable inference, let alone clear evidence, of discriminatory effect and discriminatory purpose” on that point.
His lawyers apparently made the dubious claim that just because a politician claims to have done something, he or she must actually have done that thing.
“But politicians take credit for many things over which they have no power and have made no impact,” Scarsi argued, according to NBC. “As counsel conceded at the hearing, just because someone says they influenced a prosecutorial decision does not mean that they did.”
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Turley argued that, as the president’s son, Hunter Biden had indeed received special treatment, but that such treatment benefited him rather than targeted him.
“Hunter Biden has been arguing that he is the victim of selective prosecution despite a documented history of receiving special treatment as the son of the President,” Turley wrote. “However, he has proven a key witness against himself in swatting down defenses raised by his counsel and publishing self-incriminating facts in his book.”
“The filings also did not address the fact that the Justice Department not only allowed the statute of limitations to run on major crimes, but sought to finalize an obscene plea agreement with no jail time for Hunter,” he added.
“It only fell apart when a judge decided to ask a couple of cursory questions of the prosecutor, who admitted that he had never seen an agreement this generous for a defendant.”
Interested readers can review the judge’s entire 82-page “Order on Motions to Dismiss” below.
Unsurprisingly, Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell disagreed with the judge’s dismissal of his legal arguments.
“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,” he said in a statement to NBC Monday evening.
Hunter Biden’s legal team now has about two months to sit back and lick their wounds, as Scarsi has scheduled a status conference to be held on May 29, Turley noted.
Hunter Biden’s trial on federal gun charges is currently scheduled to begin the following month, according to NBC.
A Note from Our Deputy Managing Editor:
I heard a chilling comment the other day: “We don’t even know if an election will be held in 2024.”
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The Western Journal
George Upper is the former Editor-in-Chief of The Western Journal and was a weekly co-host of “WJ Live,” powered by The Western Journal. He is currently a contributing editor in the areas of faith, politics and culture. A former U.S. Army special operator, teacher and consultant, he is a lifetime member of the NRA and an active volunteer leader in his church. Born in Foxborough, Massachusetts, he has lived most of his life in central North Carolina.
George Upper, is the former editor-in-chief of The Western Journal and is now a contributing editor in the areas of faith, politics and culture. He currently serves as the connections pastor at Awestruck Church in Greensboro, North Carolina. He is a former U.S. Army special operator, teacher, manager and consultant. Born in Massachusetts, he graduated from Foxborough High School before joining the Army and spending most of the next three years at Fort Bragg. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in English as well as a Master’s in Business Administration, all from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He and his wife life only a short drive from his three children, their spouses and his grandchildren. He is a lifetime member of the NRA and in his spare time he shoots, reads a lot of Lawrence Block and John D. MacDonald, and watches Bruce Campbell movies. He is a fan of individual freedom, Tommy Bahama, fine-point G-2 pens and the Oxford comma.
