Last week, Hunter Biden lost an appeal at the 3rd Circuit asking them to dismiss the gun case against him. That loss set up the start of the trial for an already scheduled date of June 3. But it was clear that Biden's attorney, Abbe Lowell, wasn't done and was still hoping to find some way to delay the start of the case. Today, Biden lost again as the judge overseeing his case ruled it will start on June 3 as planned.
U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika said at a hearing in Wilmington, Delaware, that the case against the president's son will proceed to trial on June 3. Biden's attorneys had sought to push the proceedings to September.
Biden's lawyer Abbe Lowell also suggested a July start date, citing potential decisions from the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals and a Supreme Court decision that could affect the case.
Rejecting both proposals, Noreika said that she had consulted case law and determined that she has jurisdiction and the trial will proceed as planned. She also said it was "not a terribly complicated case."
Biden's lawyer begged the judge to reconsider, claiming he couldn't find experts that were willing to testify for the defense.
“We have not been delaying, we have not been tardy,” Lowell said in his opening remarks to Judge Maryellen Noreika. “We have been trying.”
Lowell told Noreika that his team had found three people who had “tentatively agreed” to serve as expert witnesses, but that they had not finalized retention agreements.
“People are reluctant to become involved in this case,” he added, citing “the noise” surrounding his high-profile client...
“I am pleading with your honor to give me the time to do this,” he said.
The prosecutors in the case suggested an alternative reason why the defense was having trouble.
Prosecutor Derek Hines pushed back on the suggestion that the media attention was to blame.
“It’s written in his memoir, he was in active addiction,” Hines said. “ I don’t know what expert they can find who will say he wasn’t. I think that’s the issue they’re having.”
This should be a relatively short case, though the trial will first have to sort through 250 potential jurors. But the basic facts, that Hunter Biden claimed he wasn't a drug addict on a form when he bought a gun and that he was in fact a drug addict at the time, seem fairly simply to establish.
I speculated before about why Biden's attorney is trying so hard to delay this. I'm really not sure how this would have benefitted Hunter Biden or Joe Biden even if the judge had agreed to a September start for the trial. Maybe the plan was just to delay the verdict until after the election? Or maybe by September Biden's lawyer would come up with a new excuse for another delay.
When pleading with the judge didn't work, Biden's attorney apparently resorted to threats, saying he would ask an appellate court to order Judge Noreika to delay the trial. The judge responded by saying she didn't think team Biden would win such an appeal and that she didn't find it credible that Lowell couldn't have his case ready by next month.
There is a second Biden trial happening in California on tax charges. That one is scheduled to start June 20, though Biden's team is still trying to delay it as well. As of now, it looks like the gun trial is set to start in just under three weeks from today.
