Hunter Biden’s attorneys defended themselves in a court filing on Sunday after a judge in California accused them of making false statements and threatened them with sanctions.
Mark Geragos and Abbe Lowell, who are leading Biden’s defense in his tax case, said that “context matters” regarding their inaccurate claim that David Weiss did not bring charges against Biden until after Weiss was appointed special counsel.
“Defense counsel, perhaps inartfully, intended this use of the word ‘charges’ to refer to the current charges brought by indictment against Mr. Biden, not the lack of any charges at all,” Biden’s attorneys wrote. “Here, context matters.”
Judge Mark Scarsi last week ordered Geragos and Lowell to explain why they should not be sanctioned for making significant “misstatements” and displaying a “lack of candor” in a request the attorneys made that Biden’s indictment be dismissed on the grounds that Weiss was unlawfully appointed as special counsel.
Biden’s attorneys omitted from their request that Weiss also tried to charge Biden with tax violations in June 2023, before he became special counsel. The charges were part of a plea deal that fell apart that summer and led to Weiss becoming special counsel and bringing two indictments against Biden later that year.
“[Weiss] brought no charges until after he received the Special Counsel title,” the attorneys wrote in their initial request.
The point of their request was to argue that Biden’s nine tax charges should be tossed out because Weiss, as special counsel, was allegedly inappropriately appointed and improperly funded by Congress when he brought the charges.
“Defense counsel has never tried to mislead the Court about the fact that Mr. Weiss, as the U.S. Attorney in Delaware, brought charges by way of two now-dismissed Informations that were initially docketed in Delaware,” the attorneys wrote.
They said that, in their view, they were differentiating between charges brought through an information, which is a way to bring criminal charges without using a grand jury, and charges brought through an indictment, which requires a grand jury.
Biden’s attorneys resubmitted their request that the first son’s charges be dismissed, saying they replaced the word “charges” with “indictment” in certain instances to address Scarsi’s concerns.
The defense attorneys filed the dismissal request after Judge Aileen Cannon made the surprise decision this month to toss out former President Donald Trump’s classified documents charges in Florida on the grounds that special counsel Jack Smith was unlawfully appointed.
Biden’s attorneys said the new development warranted raising their argument about Weiss again, after they tried unsuccessfully to make the same argument earlier this year.
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They said that sanctions, which can be as mild as a written admonishment or as severe as a threat of disbarment, would also impede the attorneys’ ability to defend Biden, whose trial is set to begin on Sept. 9.
“The imposition of sanctions against a criminal defendant’s counsel this close to pre-trial and trial proceedings based on a single word would chill the vigorous defense of Mr. Biden and have the improper effect of dissuading defense counsel from raising appropriate issues,” the attorneys wrote.