Prosecutors plan to seek Hunter Biden indictment this month
David Weiss, the newly appointed special counsel tapped to prosecute President Biden’s son Hunter after a failed plea agreement, filed court papers Wednesday saying he intends to seek an indictment in the case before the end of the month.
Weiss’s three-page filing to the federal court in Delaware suggests the indictment will be on a gun charge. Hunter Biden had tentatively agreed in June to admit to the facts of illegal gun possession but not actually plead guilty to that charge, as part of a complicated two-part deal with prosecutors that also involved him pleading guilty to two tax misdemeanors.
The timing laid out by Weiss for the gun charge indictment is not particularly surprising, given that legal experts believe the statute of limitations on that alleged crime was set to expire in mid-October. But the filing is another sign that, after the collapse of the plea deal, prosecutors plan to charge the president’s son with crimes with a little more than a year until the 2024 election - meaning Hunter Biden could end up on trial in the heat of the campaign.
Prosecutors previously have signaled that the proper place to file any tax charges against the younger Biden would not be in Delaware, but in D.C. and California. It was not clear from Wednesday’s filing if one or more indictments in those jurisdictions may land at the same time as a gun charge.
The investigation into Hunter Biden began nearly five years ago. Since the 2020 election, it has become a focus of Republicans, including Donald Trump, who have sought to connect President Biden to alleged wrongdoing by his son.
When Biden was elected, the attorney general he appointed, Merrick Garland, chose to keep Weiss as the U.S. attorney to continue the investigation. Republicans have repeatedly attacked Weiss as being unable or unwilling to pursue the politically sensitive case.
Garland had long resisted calls by congressional conservatives to appoint a special counsel in the Biden case, saying Weiss was best suited to handle it. But after the plea deal fell apart, Weiss asked to be named special counsel, and Garland agreed. As special counsel, Weiss can file criminal charges in any jurisdiction in the United States - something that he would have needed special permission to do as a U.S. attorney.
The saga of the Hunter Biden investigation took another strange turn in the spring. Two IRS agents involved in the case became whistleblowers and told a congressional committee that Weiss and his office had stymied and slow-walked the investigation over many months, frustrating the agents, who said they had wanted to pursue tougher charges in the case.
Hunter Biden’s negotiated plea deal fell apart in July, when at a court hearing neither side could agree on the degree to which pleading guilty to the tax charges would protect him from any future charges involving his business dealings in the 2014-2019 time frame.
The two sides have remained far apart. Lawyers for the president’s son filed their own notice to the court Wednesday suggesting that, as far as they were concerned, the terms of the diversion agreement to settle the gun charge should be in effect. As part of that agreement, Biden was to stay out of trouble and submit to drug testing over a two-year period.
“Mr. Biden has been following and will continue to follow the conditions of that Agreement, which the U.S. Attorney’s Office agreed and signed,” Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, wrote.