Donald Trump’s Attorneys Cite Hunter Biden’s Pardon In Latest Motion To Dismiss New York Hush Money Conviction
In their latest motion to dismiss Donald Trump’s hush money conviction, his attorneys are citing President Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter.
“President Biden argued that ‘raw politics has infected this process and it led to a miscarriage of justice,'” Trump’s legal team wrote in a filing today. “These comments amounted to an extraordinary condemnation of Biden’s own DOJ. This is the same DOJ that coordinated and oversaw the politically motivated election interference witch hunts targeting President Trump by disgraced Special Counsel Jack Smith, the other biased prosecutors in Smith’s special counsel’s office, and others. This is the same DOJ that sent Matthew Colangelo to DA Bragg to help unfairly target President Trump in this empty and lawless case.”
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Read the Trump motion to dismiss.
Trump was convicted earlier year of 34 New York state felony counts related to hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels. Judge Juan Merchan has postponed Trump’s sentencing hearing indefinitely.
Last week, Smith, the special counsel who brought federal charges against Trump over the handling of classified documents and his attempts to remain in power after the 2020 election, asked for a dismissal of the cases given the former president’s pending return to the White House. Both motions for dismissal were granted.
Biden pardoned his son Hunter Biden on Sunday, just as he was to be sentenced later this month on gun and tax charges, stemming from conduct when the younger Biden was in the throes of addiction. In a statement he issued after issuing the pardon, Biden said that his son was “singled out only because he is my son – and that is wrong.”
Critics of Biden’s pardon, including some Democrats, predicted that it would embolden Trump to abuse the president’s pardoning authority, including for defendants involved in the January 6th attack on the Capitol.
Trump has claimed that the Justice Department under Biden has been weaponized against him, even though the DOJ has also pursued cases against a number of Democrats including Hunter Biden. In their latest motion, Trump’s attorneys argue that Biden’s argument about his son — that his conviction was politically motivated — mirror the president-elect’s claims about his own prosecution.
In the motion to dismiss, Trump’s attorneys argued that presidential immunity was an “unavoidable ‘legal impediment’ to further proceedings in” the case. “Therefore, the indictment must be dismissed, and the jury’s verdicts must be vacated,” they wrote.
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