Hunter Biden’s Attorneys Claim That David Weiss Is Operating Based on ‘Russian Intelligence'

Attorneys for Hunter Biden contend that a special counsel chosen by President Biden's Justice Department is carrying out Russian intelligence officers' instructions. As reported by The New York Post, in a court filing on Monday, the defense team, headed by Abbe D. Lowell, claimed that special counsel David Weiss's criminal prosecution of Hunter is executing the directives of Russian intelligence agents.

The lawyers for Joe Biden are making an effort to draw a connection between Weiss's prosecution of Hunter on federal tax and gun charges and the indictment of Alexander Smirnov, the disgraced former FBI informant whom Weiss is prosecuting for making false statements to the FBI claiming that Joe and Hunter accepted bribes from a Ukrainian oligarch. The lawyers penned a critical six-page document stating, "The Special Counsel has done exactly what the Russian intelligence operation desired by initiating prosecutions against Mr. Biden." In a brief published last month, Weiss and the prosecutors on his team outlined Smirnov's alleged connections to Russian intelligence and made the case for keeping him in custody until his trial. 

In light of Weiss' indictment of former FBI informant Smirnov last month, Lowell filed a new request to have the case against Biden dismissed. The now questionable claims that Joe and Hunter got $5 million each from Mykola Zlochevsky, the owner of Burisma Holdings, for their assistance in the removal of Viktor Shokin, the previous prosecutor general of Ukraine, came from Smirnov. Hunter's lawyers expressed fury over the questionable bribery allegations and said that Weiss' team reopened its investigation into Smirnov's charges at some point last year in response to pressure from "extremist Republicans and right-wing press outlets." From there, Lowell and Dalton seemed to draw a parallel between the breakdown of the pretrial diversion deal for the weapons charges in July and the implosion of a proposed plea agreement on the tax charges. But in the dramatic July 26, 2023 hearing, US District Judge Maryellen Noreika tore into the agreement, revealing the gap between the defense and the prosecution over whether or not he would benefit from blanket immunity.

Smirnov's allegations have nothing to do with the purported tax and firearms violations that are the subject of Hunter's prosecution. In addition to three federal firearms accusations pertaining to his purchase of a pistol in 2018 while under the influence of crack cocaine, Hunter is now facing nine federal tax charges relating to his purported failure to pay over $1 million in taxes for the tax years 2016–2019. Hunter's federal tax indictment cites his revenue from Burisma throughout the relevant period as proof that he had the money to pay his past-due taxes. As reported by NBC News, the special counsel charged Hunter's lawyers last week with spreading false information by claiming that House Republicans and former president Donald Trump are exerting pressure on the prosecution. Due to President Biden's perceived involvement in his son's international business ventures, House Republicans are investigating Biden's impeachment. The charges of IRS whistleblowers and the vast amount of papers they provided to the House Ways and Means Committee have also been investigated as part of the impeachment process.