A federal judge on Monday rejected all motions by Hunter Biden’s legal team to have the tax charges against the president’s son dropped.
Judge Mark Scarsi in an 82-page order Monday night denied the eight motions filed by the first son’s legal team to dismiss the tax charges, refuting their arguments that federal prosecutors have unfairly targeted Biden and that special counsel David Weiss levied extra charges against Biden due to Republican pressure.
Scarsi said the president’s son has “fail[ed] to present a reasonable inference, let alone clear evidence, of discriminatory effect and discriminatory purpose.” The judge added there has also been no evidence of the case’s prosecutors caving to pressure from congressional Republicans, noting that “as counsel conceded at the hearing, just because someone says they influenced a prosecutorial decision does not mean that they did.”
Biden’s legal team immediately condemned Scarsi’s ruling. “We strongly disagree with the Court’s decision and will continue to vigorously pursue Mr. Biden’s challenges to the abnormal way the Special Counsel handled this investigation and charged this case,” Biden’s lead attorney Abbe Lowell said.
The president’s son has been indicted on nine tax evasion charges, and is accused of failing to file tax returns for three years and inflating his business expenses by including his daughter’s tuition as well as payments at luxury hotels and to prostitutes.
Scarsi appeared skeptical of the Biden defense’s arguments in a hearing last Wednesday, noting there was “no evidence [from the defense] that influenced the prosecutors’ decision here.” Federal prosecutors Derek Hines and Leo Wise also denounced the defense’s assertion that politics played a role in their charges against Biden, with Hines calling it “absolutely outrageous” and Wise dismissing it as “revisionist history.”
