Attorneys for President Joe Biden’s son Hunter last Monday filed a motion requesting a new trial in the federal gun case less than two weeks after a Delaware jury found him guilty on all counts.
In the June 24 motion filed with the US District Court for the District of Delaware, the younger Biden’s attorneys claimed that the trial court did not have jurisdiction to hear the case due to appeals that were filed challenging his prosecution on the charges.
The jury deliberated for just three hours on June 11 before convicting the 54-year-old Hunter on all three felony counts in connection to the 2018 purchase of a revolver. Prosecutors accused Hunter of lying on the federal gun-purchase form when he falsely attested that he was not addicted to drugs nor did he use illicit substances.
In their motion for a new trial, the defense also argued that the conviction should be voided because while the appellate court had rejected the defense’s appeals before the trial began, it had not issued a formal “mandate” – a procedural process that formally notifies the lower court of the decision by the appeals court.
Biden’s attorneys noted that the US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit did not issue a mandate to send the case back to the Delaware District Court after it rejected two of Biden’s appeals on May 9 and again on May 21.
They wrote that the appellate court had still not issued a mandate informing the trial court that the appeals were rejected, therefore, when the District Court empaneled the jury in early June and began the trial, the Court was “without jurisdiction to do so.”
The trial judge in the case, US District Judge Maryellen Noreika, previously said that the defense’s appeals on her pre-trial rulings would not “independently divest” the court of jurisdiction over the case.
The defense initially filed the motion for a new trial on Monday, June 17 but quickly withdrew it from the docket.
