Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, departs federal court after a plea hearing on two misdemeanor charges of willfully failing to pay income taxes in Wilmington, Delaware, July 26, 2023.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Federal prosecutors plan to ask a grand jury to indict Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, before Sept. 29, they revealed in a court filing Wednesday.
The costs that special counsel David Weiss will seek against Hunter Biden weren’t disclosed within the filing in U.S. District Court in Delaware. But it surely is feasible Weiss will seek an indictment against the president’s son on a firearms charge, at least.
The brand new filing comes six weeks after a planned plea deal for Hunter to resolve charges of tax and weapons crimes fell apart when a judge questioned its conditions during a hearing in that court.
Hunter at that hearing ended up pleading not guilty to 2 counts of failure to pay federal income taxes on income of greater than $1.5 million annually in 2017 and 2018.
Hunter Biden, who had business dealings in China and Ukraine, for years has been the point of interest of allegations by Republicans of corruption involving him and his father.
Neither Biden has ever been charged in reference to those allegations.
But Hunter Biden has been under criminal investigation by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware, which Weiss leads, since 2018. Weiss was appointed to that job by former President Donald Trump, who lost his re-election bid to Joe Biden in 2020, and who’s now in search of a 2024 rematch because the Republican nominee.
Weiss in July enraged congressional Republicans in June by offering Hunter a plea deal on relatively minor charges, ones that will nearly guarantee he wouldn’t serve any time in jail.
As a part of that deal, Hunter agreed to plead guilty to the misdemeanor charges of failure to pay income taxes.
He also consented to a so-called pre-trial diversion agreement, which might allow him to flee being charged with a felony of possessing a firearm while being a drug addict if he abided by the conditions of that agreement.
On July 26, Hunter and prosecutors appeared in Delaware federal court before Judge Maryellen Noreika, with either side expecting to formalize that deal.
As a substitute, the deal collapsed after Noreika questioned prosecutors about its terms, particularly the condition that called for the judge — and never the Department of Justice — to be the one to come to a decision whether Hunter was complying with the gun charge diversion agreement over a two-year period.
That condition was widely seen as insurance against Trump pressuring the DOJ to seek out Hunter in non-compliance with the agreement if Trump returned to the White House.
Noreika, who herself was appointed by Trump, gave Hunter’s lawyers and prosecutors time to redo the deal to handle her concerns. But those discussions failed.
Weiss last month asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to appoint him special counsel within the case, which Garland consented to. Shortly afterward, Weiss said Hunter would likely face trial in either California or Washington, D.C., for the tax crimes.
Hunter’s attorneys last month told Noreika that Weiss had reneged on the previously agreed deal on the tax crimes. Defense lawyers also argued that the gun charge diversion deal was still “valid and binding.”
Weiss’s office has said the gun agreement is now off the table, and that it just isn’t valid since it was not signed by the U.S. Probation office.
But in a court filing Wednesday, Hunter’s lawyers said they still imagine the deal is in place, and said he’s complying with its conditions.
