A judge rejects Hunter Biden’s proposal to delay his June trial on federal gun charges

WILMINGTON – Hunter Biden’s federal gun case will go to trial next month, a judge said Tuesday, rejecting lawyers’ bid the president’s son delay prosecution.

U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika denied Hunter Biden’s request to delay the trial in Delaware until September, which the defense argued was necessary to line up witnesses and review evidence submitted by prosecutors. The judge said she believed “anyone can do what needs to be done” ahead of the June 3 trial start date.

President Joe Biden’s son is accused of lying about his October 2018 drug employ on a gun purchase form he kept for about 11 days. He pleaded not guilty and admitted that he struggled with a crack addiction in 2018, but his lawyers say he broke no laws.

” READ MORE: Hunter Biden criticizes the GOP in his defiant testimony and insists he didn’t involve his father in the business

He is separately charged in a California tax case that is tentatively scheduled to begin in late June.

Special counsel David Weiss’s team plans to show jurors in the gun case excerpts from his 2021 memoir “Beautiful Things,” in which he detailed his struggle with alcoholism and drug abuse after the death of his older brother in 2015Court documents filed Tuesday show Beau died of brain cancer at age 46. Hunter Biden said he has been sober since 2019.

During a hearing in federal court in Delaware, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, told the judge that many of the experts the defense had turned to were reluctant to testify in the case, citing media attention. Prosecutor Derek Hines rejected the suggestion that media attention was to blame.

“It was written in his diaries, he was actively addicted,” Hines said. “I don’t know what expert they will find who will say he wasn’t one. I think that’s their problem.”

Lowell said he wasn’t trying to find an expert to deny Biden’s struggles with addiction, but to discuss the possibility of a person recognizing an addiction at the time of their addiction. Hunter Biden was not required to attend Tuesday’s hearing and did not do so.

The defense argued that prosecutors bowed to pressure from Republicans who argued that the Democratic president’s son initially received a sweetheart deal and that he was charged under political pressure.

But Noreika, who was nominated to the position by former President Donald Trump last month rejected his application that the prosecution is politically motivated, as well as other efforts to dismiss the case. Last week, a three-judge panel of the Third U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals he said the matter could move forward to go to trial, although Hunter Biden’s lawyer said Tuesday they will continue to ask for his appeal.

He was scheduled to plead guilty last year to tax violations and would have avoided prosecution on gun charges if he had stayed out of trouble for two years. It was the culmination of a years-long investigation by federal prosecutors into the president’s son’s business dealings, and the agreement would have avoided criminal prosecution and spared Biden weeks of front-page news as the 2024 election approached.

But the deal broke down after the judge who was supposed to sign the agreement asked a number of questions about it.

In the Delaware case, he was charged with two counts of making false statements, first for checking a box falsely stating that he was not addicted to drugs, and second, for taking him to a store to obtain federally required documentation. The third charge alleges he had possession of the gun for approximately 11 days even though he knew he was using drugs.

In California, he was charged with three felonies and six misdemeanors in connection with taxes owed to him from 2016 to 2019 in the amount of at least $1.4 million. Prosecutors accused him of spending millions of dollars on an “extravagant lifestyle” instead of paying taxes. The back taxes have already been paid.