Attorneys for Hunter Biden pushed back against a federal judge’s threat to sanction them for making “false statements” while admitting their motion to dismiss Biden’s criminal charges in California.
In a filing Sunday with the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Biden’s legal team said it “never tried to mislead” the court after U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi wrote Biden’s attorneys falsely claimed U.S. Attorney David Weiss did not bring charges against the president’s son until after he was appointed special counsel.
“Defense counsel, perhaps inartfully, intended this use of the word ‘charges’ to refer to the current charges brought by indictment against Mr. Biden, not the lack of any charges at all,” Biden’s attorneys wrote. “Here, context matters.”
The part of the motion in question stated, “As U.S. Attorney he had years to bring whatever charges he believed were merited, but he brought no charges until after he received the Special Counsel title that he sought.”
Scarsi, in his order last week, wrote Weiss brought the initial charges against Biden as a U.S. attorney and before being appointed special counsel and accused the lawyers of filing misstatements.
The president’s son’s lawyers said they will amend the motion to replace the word “charges” with “indictments” in the contested statements, but emphasized the wording is not misleading when in context.
“Nevertheless, there is no basis on which to sanction Mr. Biden’s counsel for the use of that one word, which was not misleading in the context in which the two prior Informations had been repeatedly addressed with the Court,” the lawyers wrote.
The filing comes days after Scarsi issued an order to the legal team asking it to “show cause why sanctions should not be imposed for making false statements in the motion.”
Biden’s lawyers filed a motion earlier this month asking the judge to dismiss his criminal charges in California, where he is slated to stand trial this fall.
He is accused of failing to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes between 2016 and 2019.
The nine felony and misdemeanor tax offenses further allege he tried to evade the assessment of taxes in 2018 by filing false returns and instead used the money to fund an indulgent lifestyle that included drugs and alcohol.
His lawyers also filed a motion asking a judge in Delaware to toss his criminal charges in his federal gun case, which led to a conviction last month.
Both of the motions cited U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who dismissed former President Trump’s classified documents charges in Florida, ruling that special counsel Jack Smith was not lawfully appointed.