President Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter means that Hunter’s two criminal cases won’t go forward to sentencing. But special counsel David Weiss has fought the defense effort to get the gun and tax indictments officially dismissed in Delaware and California.
In support of his opposition, Weiss cited the government’s previous objection to dismissing Steve Bannon’s indictment when Donald Trump pardoned Bannon in his first term. Weiss noted that the prosecution in Bannon’s case didn’t dispute that the pardon ended the matter but still maintained that dismissing the indictment was unnecessary; rather, the prosecution in Bannon’s case said the court should terminate Bannon as a defendant and have the docket reflect the pardon as the reason for his case ending. As Hunter Biden’s counsel emphasized in reply to Weiss’ opposition, the judge in Bannon’s case dismissed his indictment over the government’s objection.
Nonetheless, the post-pardon litigation means the judges in California and Delaware have to decide how to bury Hunter’s cases formally, even if they’re both basically dead from a legal perspective. While the California judge hasn’t decided yet, the Delaware judge on Tuesday entered an order on the docket stating that all proceedings are terminated due to the pardon but without stating that the indictment is dismissed:
Having reviewed the parties’ submissions … and in the absence of binding precedent, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that pursuant to the Executive Grant of Clemency signed by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on December 1, 2024, Defendant Robert Hunter Biden has been pardoned for, inter alia, the offenses for which a jury rendered a verdict in this case … As such, all proceedings in this case are hereby terminated.
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Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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