Federal prosecutors oppose Hunter Biden’s request to subpoena Trump documents in Delaware gun case
By Holmes Lybrand, CNN
(CNN) — The special counsel investigating Hunter Biden opposed his request to issue subpoenas for documents from Donald Trump and others from the former president’s administration in a filing Monday, pushing back on the notion that charges against the president’s son in Delaware were a result of selective or vindictive prosecution.
In November, Hunter Biden’s attorneys asked the federal judge overseeing his case in Delaware – where he is charged with three gun crimes – for permission to subpoena documents from Trump, former Attorney General Bill Barr and other Justice Department officials.
Hunter Biden’s attorneys said the heart of his defense is that the case is “possibly a vindictive or selective prosecution arising from an unrelenting pressure campaign beginning in the last administration” and argued that information from the subpoenas would support such a defense.
But special counsel David Weiss, whose team is also using a Los Angeles grand jury as part of an ongoing investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings, argued in Monday’s filing that Hunter Biden failed “to identify any actual evidence of bias, vindictiveness, or discriminatory intent on the Special Counsel’s part.”
“(H)is arguments ignore an inconvenient truth: No charges were brought against defendant during the prior administration when the subpoena recipients actually held office in the Executive Branch,” Weiss wrote. “Instead, every charge in this matter was or will be brought during the current administration — one in which defendant’s father, Joseph R. Biden, is the President of the United States and Merrick B. Garland is the Attorney General that was appointed by President Biden and who personally appointed the Special Counsel.”
Weiss also wrote that claims of a vindictive or selective prosecution can only be litigated before a trial begins and not during the trial itself. He criticized the requested subpoenas for seeking “broadly worded categories of documents across seven years.”
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to the three charges, which include illegally possessing a firearm while using illicit drugs.
“His allegations and subpoena requests focus on likely inadmissible, far-reaching, and non-specific categories of documents concerning the actions and motives of individuals who did not make the relevant prosecutorial decision in his case,” Weiss wrote in his conclusion.
The-CNN-Wire
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