Hunter Biden’s latest effort to have his federal tax charges dismissed has crashed and burned.
U.S. District Court Judge Mark Scarsi issued an order Monday rejecting Hunter Biden’s claim that special prosecutor David Weiss could not be legally appointed and that Congress did approve funding for Weiss, according to NBC.
Hunter Biden had filed similar motions in the past that were denied by Scarsi, who was appointed by former President Donald Trump.
“As he concedes in his notice of the motion, Mr. Biden plainly seeks reconsideration of issues already decided upon his February motion,” Scarsi wrote in his order.
“The Court declines to reach the merits of the motion because there is no valid basis for reconsideration of the Court’s order denying Mr. Biden’s motion to dismiss the indictment,” he added.
Scarsi said the motion came well after the Feb. 20 deadline he imposed on such filings.
“The Court specifically indicated that this was the deadline for motions on issues the parties at that time intended to raise,” he wrote.
Hunter Biden had sought to leverage an opinion from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas on the subject of presidential immunity and a ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon in the classified documents case against Trump.
The judge swept the argument aside.
Should Hunter Biden be sentenced to prison?
“Neither Justice Thomas’s opinion nor Judge Cannon’s order is binding precedent,” Scarsi wrote.
Hunter Biden’s federal tax trial is scheduled to begin on Sept. 5, according to ABC.
Scarsi’s order on Monday ended some sharply worded conflict with Hunter Biden’s attorneys.
A Hunter Biden filing claimed Weiss “brought no charges” against Hunter Biden while Weiss was the U.S. Attorney for Delaware, according to CNN.
“These statements, however, are not true, and Mr. Biden’s counsel knows they are not true,” Scarsi wrote at the time.
Weiss filed tax charges against Hunter Biden that were scheduled to be dealt with in a 2023 plea agreement that fell apart.
In his Monday order, Scarsi said he had been irked by the Biden team’s “lack of candor” in the filing.
Although he said the Biden team’s efforts to wriggle out of any punishment “lack any rhetorical sense,” the order said he would not punish the attorneys involved.
However, Scarsi warned Biden’s attorneys that going forward “candor is paramount.”
