WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s son Hunter asked a federal judge Thursday to dismiss tax and gun-related lawsuits against him, citing a Florida ruling this week that dismissed a separate lawsuit against former President Donald Trump.
The requests filed in federal courts in Delaware and California underscore the potential ramifications of U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon’s dismissal of the classified documents case against Trump on Monday and the potential for it to disrupt the legal landscape surrounding the Justice Department’s special counsels.
Hunter Biden and Trump were both prosecuted by special prosecutors appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland. In dismissing Trump’s case, Cannon ruled that the appointment of the special prosecutor who prosecuted Trump, Jack Smith, violated the Constitution because he was directly appointed to the position by Garland rather than being nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
Smith’s team said the Justice Department followed longstanding precedent — for example, the Trump-era appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller to investigate Russian interference in the election was upheld by the courts — and appealed Cannon’s dismissal to a federal appeals court in Atlanta.
In a pair of filings Thursday, Biden’s lawyers said the same logic should apply to his cases and should result in the dismissal of an ongoing tax lawsuit in Los Angeles — currently scheduled for trial in September — and a separate gun-related case in Delaware, in which Biden was convicted in June of three felony counts.
The Biden team has made similar arguments before, without success, but now believes there are good reasons to reconsider them.
“Based on these new legal developments, Mr. Biden seeks to dismiss the indictment against him because the special counsel who initiated these prosecutions was also appointed in violation of the Appointments Clause,” Biden’s lawyers wrote, also citing an opinion this month by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas that questioned the propriety of the appointment of a special counsel.
“The Attorney General relied on the exact same authority to appoint the special counsel in both the Trump and Biden cases, and both appointments are invalid for the same reason,” the lawyers added.
Smith and the special counsel who prosecuted Biden, David Weiss, are different in that Smith was hired outside the Justice Department while Weiss was working as a U.S. attorney in Delaware at the time of his appointment.
In his decision, Cannon noted that a special prosecutor’s powers are “arguably broader than those of a traditional U.S. attorney because he or she is authorized to exercise his or her investigative powers in multiple districts during the course of the same investigation.”
Biden’s lawyers stressed Thursday that that’s exactly what happened in his case, as Weiss, in his role as special prosecutor, filed cases against Biden in California and Delaware and separately brought charges against a former FBI informant accused of lying about the Bidens.
“Redundant U.S. Attorneys do not have this power. Given that Congress requires that a U.S. Attorney be nominated by the President and confirmed by the Senate, it is foolish to assume that Congress would authorize the Attorney General to unilaterally appoint someone as a special counsel with authority equal to or greater than that of a U.S. Attorney,” Biden’s lawyers wrote. “That is what was attempted here.”
