On February 28, 2024, Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, arrived at the O’Neill House of Representatives Office Building in Washington, U.S., to join members of the Republican-led House Oversight Committee in conducting an impeachment inquiry into the president.
Evelyn Hochstein | Reuters
A federal appeals court on Thursday rejected Hunter Biden’s request to dismiss the pending criminal gun case against him, calling his appeal premature.
The ruling clears the way for the Hunter Biden case to begin on June 3 in U.S. District Court in Delaware. Biden is the son of President Joe Biden.
In Thursday’s ruling, a three-judge panel ruled U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit Hunter Biden has failed to certify that a trial judge’s April ruling allowing the gun case to proceed can be appealed before a final decision is made that could include his sentencing.
The appeals panel’s decision was unanimous but did not rule on Biden’s argument that the indictment should be dismissed.
If Biden is convicted at trial, he could re-raise his dismissal argument to the same appeals court, which the court declined to consider in Thursday’s order.
Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said he will ask the full 3rd Circuit Court of Justice to reconsider Biden’s appeal and may even ask the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case.
“In reviewing the panel’s decision, we determined that the issues involved were so significant that further review of our request was appropriate,” Lowell said.
Biden has been charged with three criminal counts related to his purchase of a handgun while he was addicted to drugs. He pleads not guilty.
In late 2023, Biden’s lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Marilyn Noreka to dismiss the case against him on three separate grounds.
First, the indictment violates the non-prosecution clause in the pretrial diversion agreement that Biden and prosecutors signed before they planned to reach a deal on the case to avoid having the indictment overturned last year.
In a second motion to dismiss, Biden’s lawyers claimed he was subject to retaliatory and selective prosecution because his father was president. According to this argument, the indictment violated the separation of powers clause of the U.S. Constitution because congressional Republicans improperly promoted him as a political scapegoat for attacks on the president.
A third motion to dismiss argued that the appointment of David Weiss as the Justice Department’s special prosecutor handling the Biden case violated federal rules requiring special prosecutors to be selected from outside the U.S. government. Weiss was the U.S. attorney for Delaware when he was appointed special counsel, and he remains in that office.
In a separate ruling in April, Noreca rejected all three arguments for dismissal of the indictment.
Biden was separately charged with tax crimes by Weiss in federal court in Los Angeles. In early April, the judge in the case rejected eight defense motions to dismiss the case, in which Biden had pleaded not guilty.
This is developing news. Please check back for updates.
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