A federal judge has threatened Hunter Biden's lawyers with financial sanctions for lying to the court.
The California judge in Biden's tax evasion case rebuked his lawyers for twisting the facts in their motion to dismiss the charges.
Ironically, Biden's lawyers tried to have the case tossed out by citing one of Donald Trump's legal victories.
To recap, Biden was found guilty of lying about his drug use in a June gun trial. He's also facing charges for tax evasion in California this fall.
Biden has tried to have his cases thrown out on various grounds, including by arguing he is the target of a witch hunt (yes, really.) None of it has worked, so far.
In his latest move, Biden cited the bombshell decision against Special Counsel Jack Smith in Trump's classified documents case. The judge, Aileen Cannon, found that Smith, a private citizen, was unlawfully appointed by attorney general Merrick Garland and threw out the case.
Garland also appointed Special Counsel David Weiss, the Delaware prosecutor going after Hunter.
Biden's lawyers have cited Cannon's ruling to push for Weiss' dismissal, but the California judge in the tax case, Mark Scarsi, notes there is an important distinction.
While Smith is a private citizen, Weiss was already a full-fledged, Senate-confirmed U.S. attorney when he first brought charges against Hunter.
While Biden claims he wasn't charged until after Weiss' promotion, Scarsi said the claims are "not true, and Mr. Biden’s counsel knows they are not true."
Indeed, Weiss was still a U.S. attorney when he charged Hunter with misdemeanors as part of a notorious plea deal that unraveled last summer. Weiss later pursued felony gun and tax charges against Biden.
"The misstatements in the current motion are not trivial. Mr. Weiss’s institution of charges against Mr. Biden in his capacity as U.S. Attorney offers a meaningful distinction between this case and the nonbinding district court decision on which Mr. Biden bases his motion,” Scarsi wrote.
“But Mr. Biden’s motion does not engage with this distinction; instead, counsel avoids the issue by misrepresenting the history of the proceedings,” he continued, adding that the court “has little tolerance for lack of candor from counsel.”
It's just the latest setback for the Biden clan, with a pardon growing more elusive for Hunter after his dad decided to forgo re-election.
