Hunter Biden’s lawyers claim they simply mixed up legal terms when filing papers to get his tax-fraud charges tossed — and that a single word shouldn’t cost them the case.
The lawyers were forced to explain their flub this week when a California judge called them out over it and threatened to impose sanctions as a result.
California federal Judge Mark Scarsi on Wednesday warned that he might fine the legal team repping President Biden’s son, saying it knowingly made misstatements several times in court papers seeking to have the case tossed.
Specifically, Hunter’s side claimed earlier this month that special counsel David Weiss hadn’t brought charges against the 54-year-old defendant until after Weiss was appointed to the unique role.
But Weiss had in fact brought the charges against Hunter earlier, as the US Attorney in Delaware.
Those charges, brought while Weiss was acting as a US attorney, were part of a plea deal that Hunter was expected to plead guilty to.
The plea bargain then famously blew up, and Weiss brought the charges again as special counsel.
Hunter’s lawyers, in their response Sunday to Scarsi’s accusations against them, claimed they just accidentally mixed up their words — while citing The Post’s coverage first among other media articles in their written argument.
They said they didn’t mean that Weiss hadn’t brought “charges’’ against the defendant as US attorney, they meant “indictments.’’
The lawyers argued they were guilty at most of “inartfully” using terms.
They said they wanted to keep their motion papers intact, other than to swap out the words.
“Defense counsel clearly did not intend to make false statements or mislead the court,” the lawyers wrote.
“The imposition of sanctions against a criminal defendant’s counsel this close to pre-trial and trial proceedings based on a single word would chill the vigorous defense of Mr. Biden and have the improper effect of dissuading defense counsel from raising appropriate issues,” their filing reads.
Hunter is accused of failing to pay taxes on $1.4 million.
But his lawyers are trying to get the charges tossed based on a recent ruling involving former President Donald Trump’s Florida confidential-documents case.
A federal judge in Florida had ruled that the appointment of a special counsel in that case, Jack Smith, was unconstitutional because it bypassed Congress and was instead made by US Attorney General Merrick Garland. Smith is appealing the ruling.
In the meantime, Hunter’s camp is trying to get Weiss’s prosecution thus far tossed, based on the same ruling.
But Scarsi, in his initial response last week, said Hunter’s lawyers glossed over an important difference between the two cases: that Weiss was appointed by Congress to the US attorney job before his elevation to special counsel — unlike Smith in Trump’s case.
The California judge has yet to rule with finality on the issue — or whether to fine the lawyers for their mistake.
Weiss also prosecuted a second case against Hunter in Delaware for illegally owning a gun while hooked on drugs. Hunter was found guilty at trial earlier this summer but is trying to overturn the conviction based on the same claim that Weiss shouldn’t be on that case, either.
A spokesperson with Weiss’s office declined to comment.
Hunter’s lawyers did not return a Post request for comment Monday.