A California judge is threatening to bring sanctions against Hunter Biden’s lawyers for lying in court papers when they tried to use Donald Trump’s bombshell dismissal to also get the first son’s tax case tossed.
California federal Judge Mark Scarsi said Biden’s defense attorney knew he was making false statements when he claimed “several times” that special counsel David Weiss didn’t mount charges against the embattled first son until after he received the special prosecutor title.
The judge said the lies “are not trivial” because Weiss’ appointment after already bringing the charges in his role as US attorney in Delaware “offers a meaningful distinction” from Trump’s case — in which Jack Smith was appointed to prosecute the Republican presidential nominee before he brought charges against the former president.
Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland — but not Congress — while Weiss was first approved by a Senate vote before being elevated to special counsel status.
“But Mr. Biden’s motion does not engage with this distinction; instead, counsel avoids the issue by misrepresenting the history of the proceedings,” Scarsi wrote. “This court has little tolerance for lack of candor from counsel.”
The former president’s criminal charges in the Florida case accusing him of illegally hoarding troves of confidential documents at his Mar-a-Lago home after leaving office were tossed last week on the grounds that Smith was illegally appointed to his post — without Congress signing off on it.
Smith’s office has since filed an appeal of the non-final decision.
Just three days after, Biden’s lawyers, Abbe Lowell and Bartholomew Dalton, filed papers saying his tax evasion case should be dismissed on the same grounds.
Scarsi is threatening to bring monetary sanctions against the attorneys if they don’t respond in a “timely and satisfactory” way to his findings. The judge also said he’ll allow Hunter to withdraw or fix the motion papers that contain the untrue statements.
Mark Geragos, another of Biden’s lawyers, told The Post that “the whole point” of the president’s son’s motion to dismiss is about a US attorney in Delaware not having the “authority to bring charges in California” — a fact which he claims Scarsi didn’t address.
Geragos said Biden’s team plans to respond fully in court papers to the judge.
Biden, 54, is slated to go on trial in September on charges that he evaded paying taxes for three years on $1.4 million he owed to the IRS.
He was separately convicted at a Delaware trial in June of illegally owning a gun while hooked on crack cocaine. He faces up to 25 years behind bars in that case.
A sentencing date hasn’t been set yet.
A spokesman for Weiss’ office declined to comment Thursday.