Hunter Biden’s lawyer hinted Monday that special counsel David Weiss is following instructions from Russian President Vladimir Putin to prosecute his 54-year-old eldest son.
Attorneys Abby Lowell and Bartholomew Dalton accused Weiss of imposing tax and gun-related charges on the younger Biden after a plea deal fell through last July, saying his actions were in the interests of the Kremlin. claimed to promote.
“The special counsel did exactly what Russian intelligence wanted, by opening a case against Mr. Biden.” the lawyer wrote in a damning six-page filing Monday.
The supplement was a supplement to Lowell’s motion to drop the case against Biden after Weiss indicted former FBI informant Alexander Smirnov last month.
Smirnov said Joe Biden and Hunter Biden each received $5 million from Burisma Holdings owner Mykola Zlochevsky in exchange for their help in ousting former Ukrainian prosecutor general Viktor Shokin. It became the source of the now dubious suspicion that he had received it.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers said sometime last year that Weiss’ team responded to Smirnov’s claims in response to pressure from “radical Republicans and right-wing media outlets” who had expressed outrage over the questionable bribery charges. He claimed that he had “restarted” the examination.
From there, Mr. Rowell and Mr. Dalton appear to have drawn a connection between the collapse of a planned plea deal last July on tax charges and the subsequent collapse of a pretrial diversion agreement on firearms charges.
“By the end of that month (July), the then-U.S. Department of Justice had signed and proposed a plea deal in exchange for consulting with Mr. ” and abruptly withdrew from the agreement. We appealed to this court and terminated the diversion agreement,” they wrote.
But U.S. District Judge Mariellen Noreika broke that agreement in a dramatic hearing on July 26, 2023, exposing a standoff between the prosecution and defense over whether he should receive full immunity. exposed under.
Days before the hearing last July, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) released an FD-1023 form detailing Smirnov’s allegations against the FBI.
Several Republicans have spoken publicly about the file, including James Comer (R-Ky.), chairman of the oversight committee that is leading the president’s impeachment inquiry.
Mr. Smirnov, a dual citizen of the United States and Israel, currently faces two felonies for making false statements to the FBI and creating false fictitious records. He pleaded not guilty.
After Mr. Weiss indicted Mr. Smirnov last month, Mr. Lowell requested that the tax charges against his eldest son be dropped.
In a follow-up filing Monday, Mr. Lowell and Mr. Dalton blasted Mr. Smirnov’s alleged ties to Russian intelligence.
Prosecutors argued that Mr. Smirnov spread a false story, believed to be from Russian intelligence, that recordings of Hunter Biden’s damaging remarks were kept at the Premier Palace Hotel in Kiev.
Prosecutors say this easily turned out to be false because Hunter “has never traveled to Ukraine.”
“The special counsel tells us that Russian intelligence sought to use allegations against Hunter Biden to influence the U.S. presidential election in order to undermine President Biden’s re-election.” Lowell and Dalton he emphasized.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers also accused Weiss’ team of “knowingly or blindly carrying out a Russian intelligence program.”
Mr. Weiss’ team previously blasted Mr. Lowell’s claims that his office is becoming increasingly “selective and vindictive,” calling them “conspiratorial” and “a house in the sand.”
“The defendant is fabricating a conspiracy theory that the prosecutor’s office ‘raised the security deposit’ to appease politicians who have no connection to the prosecutor’s office and are not even members of the current government,” prosecutors said in a filing last Friday. mentioned in.
Hunter Biden faces nine tax-related charges and three charges related to illegal possession of a firearm while under the influence of illegal drugs. He pleaded not guilty.
Allegations that Russia is the puppet master behind Hunter Biden’s affairs are nothing new.
In October 2020, 51 former intelligence officials signed a letter stating that his laptop’s hard drive, first reported days earlier in a bombshell by the Post, “contains typical features of Russian intelligence operations. It has everything,” he claimed.
Since then, many other news outlets, including CBS, have corroborated the hard drive’s wide coverage. IRS whistleblowers claimed last year that the FBI even verified the authenticity of abandoned laptops.
Late last month, Hunter Biden testified before the House Republican impeachment inquiry.
He was coy about whether the discarded laptop was real or not. I testified that it was there. It was reported that elements of his laptop were “fabricated, hacked, stolen or 100 percent manipulated.” He cited just one example of a “fabricated” report about a meeting with a secret agent in a Los Angeles hotel room.
At the same time, Hunter Biden appeared to confirm and elaborate on many of the revelations that arose from the laptop during his confirmation hearing.
For example, he admitted that the “big man” mentioned in an email about a deal with a Chinese state-owned energy company was his father.
Hunter Biden also dismissed the idea that his father profited from the deal with CEFC China Energy, as the message seemed to hint that it might be true.
Additionally, last year, his lawyers filed a lawsuit against repair shop owner John Paul Mac Isaac, alleging that he “unlawfully” provided laptop data to Biden. It claimed that it paved the way for 100 gigabytes of personal data to be leaked “without discretion.” It will be spread on the internet. ”
The newspaper has contacted the Department of Justice for comment.
