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Special council urges judge to move forward with Hunter Biden trial despite delay attempts

May 18, 2024 | | Print Article

While Hunter Biden’s defense attorneys sought a nearly three-month trial delay, the federal prosecution responded with a reality check on how President Joe Biden’s son is “like any other defendant.”

Trials for the first son’s federal gun charges in Delaware and his tax evasion charges in California have both been slated to begin in June. Though previously accepted by the defense, Biden’s attorneys have filed for delays with the respective courts, and special counsel David Weiss was having none of it.

“No defendant would be afforded a continuance because he wrongly chose to lodge a jurisdictionless appeal, and this defendant should be treated no differently,” wrote Weiss in a Friday filing opposing any delay to the June 20 trial start. “Defense counsel offers a handful of other reasons why he wants a trial delay of 77 days, but none of them warrant a continuance. The motion should be denied.”

Key to the prosecution’s multi-pronged argument was the fact that at multiple times, Biden’s defense had agreed to the trial dates despite a now-claimed potential conflict with the Delaware case slated to begin little more than two weeks earlier.

“In his latest effort to delay trial (an application for continuance), defendant’s lead counsel’s primary reason is the weeklong June 3, 2024, trial in Delaware at which he is one of the lawyers representing the defendant with respect to firearms charges,” wrote the special counsel. “But on March 13, 2024, and again on April 11, 2024, lead counsel told the Delaware court he was able to try the gun case in Delaware on June 3, 2024, with full knowledge that this trial would begin on June 20, 2024, per this Court’s order several months earlier.”

On Tuesday, Biden’s defense attorney Abbe Lowell had already suffered his latest blow from U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika in the felony gun charges case after she had denied a similar request to delay the trial until September.

The defense had claimed difficulty in finding expert witnesses to testify and the judge had told Lowell she was not required to be his “scheduling secretary.”

Noreika, the same judge who had rejected Biden’s 2023 sweetheart plea deal, had previously pushed back on the defense’s claims that there was political motivation behind his facing felony charges for allegedly lying about his drug use when purchasing a firearm in 2018.

“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,” Noreika had laid out in no uncertain terms. “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.”

“Defendant’s claim is effectively that his own father targeted him for being his son, a claim that is nonsensical under the facts here,” added the judge.

While it remains to be seen how the California court will rule on Biden’s request for a delay, Weiss further alleged that the defense did not stipulate how the additional 77 days would be utilized and reminded that the prosecution had already issued trial subpoenas for over 30 witnesses who had arranged their schedules to appear before the court.

A scathing summation of the prosecution’s opinion on the request was contained in the declaration, “He is not above the law and should be treated like any other defendant.”

Kevin Haggerty
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