Special Counsel Objects To Dismissing Hunter Biden Tax Case After Pardon

Following President Joe Biden’s pardon of Hunter Biden, special counsel David Weiss is battling Biden’s attempt to have his California indictment dismissed as the Delaware case comes to an end.

Hunter’s two criminal cases won’t proceed to sentencing as a result of President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son. However, special counsel David Weiss has opposed the defense’s attempt to have the tax and gun indictments in California and Delaware formally dropped.

Weiss used the government’s prior objection to the dismissal of Steve Bannon’s indictment—when Bannon was pardoned by Donald Trump during his first term—to bolster his opposition. Weiss pointed out that although the prosecution in Bannon’s case did not contest that the pardon put an end to the case, they insisted that the indictment should not be dismissed. Instead, they argued that the court ought to dismiss Bannon as a defendant and make the pardon appear on the docket as the reason his case was dismissed. The judge in Bannon’s case dismissed his indictment over the government’s objection, as Hunter Biden’s attorney emphasized in response to Weiss’s objection.

Even though Hunter’s cases are essentially dead from a legal standpoint, the post-pardon litigation requires the judges in Delaware and California to decide how to formally bury them. The Delaware judge on Tuesday entered an order on the docket stating that all proceedings are terminated due to the pardon, but without stating that the indictment is dismissed, while the California judge has not yet made a decision:

Following a review of the submissions from the parties and without any legally binding precedent, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, in accordance with the Executive Grant of Clemency signed by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on December 1, 2024, Defendant Robert Hunter Biden has been pardoned for the offenses for which a jury found him guilty in this case, among other things. As a result, this case’s proceedings are now over.