Hunter Biden takes jabs at David Weiss’s credibility in gun case

Hunter Biden’s defense team took shots at David Weiss’s credibility in a court filing on Tuesday, arguing the special counsel has “gotten much wrong” since charging the first son last year with illegally purchasing a firearm.

Defense attorneys’ claims that Weiss has made mistakes came as part of their fight to obtain additional discovery in the case, and they could signal that the first son intends to chip away at Weiss’s credibility piece by piece as a strategy to undermine his prosecution.

Defense attorneys, for example, accused prosecutors of misrepresenting a photo from Biden’s computer data that they included in their most recent court filing.

The photo was among three photos and several text messages prosecutors shared in the filing in part to demonstrate that Biden “took multiple photographs of videos [sic] apparent cocaine, crack cocaine, and drug paraphernalia” in 2018 at the time of his alleged gun crime.

While Biden’s attorneys did not confirm the authenticity of the photos and messages — they continue to contend that Biden’s now-prolific laptop data have been manipulated — they said after reviewing discovery Weiss had provided to them, they found that the photo in question was of sawdust rather than cocaine.

They said that a fuller review of the discovery showed it was also a photo taken not by Biden but rather by his then-psychiatrist, Keith Ablow. Ablow shared it with Biden as a message of encouragement about a carpenter who chose a sober life, the discovery showed.

(Screenshot from Hunter Biden’s court filing, Feb. 20, 2024) “The prosecution was reckless in making such a hyperbolic and sensational claim in a public filing, which it surely realized would prejudice Mr. Biden in the public eye,” Biden’s attorneys wrote.

The defense attorneys did not address the other photos and messages, some of which indicate that Hunter Biden was indeed using drugs in 2018 around the same time he purchased a revolver. Weiss has alleged that Biden lied on a gun form about his drug use to purchase the firearm. Biden has pleaded not guilty to the charges and is pushing to have his case dismissed.

The defense attorneys also seized on the recent arrest of Alexander Smirnov to raise questions about Weiss’s credibility.

The FBI had been using Smirnov as a confidential source, and FBI agents documented in a form in 2020 that Smirnov told the bureau that he learned that President Joe Biden and Hunter Biden once accepted millions of dollars in bribes from a Ukrainian official. Republicans widely shared the unproven claim, but in a stunning twist, Weiss indicted Smirnov last week over allegations he lied to the FBI and fabricated the story.

Hunter Biden’s attorneys tied the allegation against Smirnov to their own case.

They said Weiss’s claim in court last summer that the first son could still be charged under the Foreign Agents Registration Act “came as a surprise,” and they suggested that Weiss made that claim only after he began looking into Smirnov. Weiss has never brought charges against Hunter Biden for a FARA violation, but he has also not ruled out the possibility that he still could do so.

Defense attorneys nevertheless argued that Weiss’s only interest in charging Hunter Biden with a FARA violation must have stemmed from the now allegedly debunked claims Smirnov had made.

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“Disclosure about why the Special Counsel abandoned its June/July 2023 agreements with Mr. Biden [because of a possible FARA charge] and the role played by the Smirnov allegations may reveal flaws worse than mistaking sawdust for cocaine,” Hunter Biden’s defense attorneys wrote.

The arguments between Hunter Biden’s defense team and Weiss’s prosecutors come after the first son asked the judge overseeing the case to dismiss it on several grounds. The parties in the case are now awaiting a ruling on those requests.