Special Counsel Opposes Hunter Biden’s Motion to Dismiss Charges After Pardon

Special Counsel Opposes Hunter Biden’s Motion to Dismiss Charges After Pardon

Special Counsel David Weiss challenged Hunter Biden’s request to dismiss his California tax evasion charges.

“The defendant’s motion should be denied since there is no binding authority on this Court which requires dismissal,” Weiss wrote in his filing.

In other words, a pardon does not erase your criminal record. The Office of the Pardon Attorney’s website states: “Please also be aware that if you were to be granted a presidential pardon, the pardoned offense would not be removed from your criminal record. Instead, both the federal conviction as well as the pardon would both appear on your record.”

Hunter wants the charges dismissed since daddy President Joe Biden pardoned him for all crimes he may or may not have committed between 2014 and December 1, 2024.

Weiss reminded the court that “a lawfully constituted grand jury” returned the indictment. Hunter also “filed eight motions to dismiss the indictment,” but “all of which were determined to be meritless.”

In his motions, Hunter insisted that “the indictment was a product of vindictive and selective prosecution.” However, the Court rejected that argument because he did not provide any evidence to back up his claim.

WEIRD. Biden used Hunter’s argument, whining that the justice system targeted and wrongly convicted him.

Weiss prosecuted Hunter for tax evasion in California in the United States District Court for the Central District of California. He attempted to give the First Son a sweetheart deal, but it fell apart when the judge tore it apart.

Hunter ended up pleading guilty.

Hunter’s lawyers filed a “Defendant’s Notice of Pardon” right after Biden issued the pardon. The counsel “did not attach the pardon to its filing and the government has not received a copy of it.”

The counsel claimed “a Full and Unconditional Pardon [] requires dismissal of the Indictment against him” and “the pardon ‘requires an automatic dismissal of the Indictment with prejudice.'”

Weiss said the lawyers made these claims without any legal support, insisting “counsel misrepresents the law” because “[N]othing requires the dismissal of the indictment in this case.”

According to Weiss, the courts in the district “do not dismiss indictments when pardons are granted.”

Weiss continued:

Rather, in each of the most recent cases where pardons have been granted by former President Obama and former President Trump, the United States District Court for the Central District of California has not dismissed the indictment. Instead, it has been the practice of this court that once an Executive Grant of Clemency has been filed on the docket, the docket is marked closed, the disposition entry is updated to reflect the executive grant of clemency, and no further action is taken by the Court.

The special counsel cited United States v. Flynn, which mentioned Chief Justice Marshall reiterating the purpose of a pardon in 1833: “[a] pardon is an act of grace, proceeding from the power intrusted [sic] with the execution of the laws, which exempts the individual on whom it is bestowed, from the punishment the law inflicts for a crime he has committed.”

This is important from the Flynn case in Weiss’s filing, which comes from In re: Oliver L. North (1996): “a pardon does not blot out guilt or expunge a judgment of conviction.”

The full quote from the North case is: “Because a pardon does not blot out guilt or expunge a judgment of conviction, one can conclude that a pardon does not blot out probable cause of guilt or expunge an indictment.”

The pardon also does not “erase a judgment of conviction, or its underlying legal and factual findings.”

In other words, your criminal record remains in tact. Hunter just won’t face any penalties, including prison time.

“If a pardon did not ‘expunge the indictment’ in that case, it should not do so here,” wrote Weiss. “The cases cited by the defendant in his filing do not explain why an indictment should be dismissed following an act of clemency when the act of clemency terminates the criminal case.”

Weiss concluded:

As stated above, the defendant did not docket the pardon nor has the government seen it. If media reports are accurate, the Government does not challenge that the defendant has been the recipient of an act of mercy. But that does not mean the grand jury’s decision to charge him, based on a finding of probable cause, should be wiped away as if it never occurred. It also does not mean that his charges should be wiped away because the defendant falsely claimed that the charges were the result of some improper motive. No court has agreed with the defendant on these baseless claims, and his request to dismiss the indictment finds no support in the law or the practice of this district.

In conclusion, a pardon does not erase your criminal record. A grand jury indicted Hunter. Hunter then pleaded guilty to all the charges.

Maybe Hunter should have thought twice (gosh, you can apply that to so much in the dude’s life) before he said “yes” when the judge asked him, “Do you agree you committed every element of every crime in the indictment?”

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