Hunter Biden asked a federal court on Wednesday to authorize subpoenas that would require former President Donald Trump and three top former Department of Justice officials to produce documents related to the opening of the investigation into the first son.
In addition to Trump, Biden is seeking to subpoena former Attorney General Bill Barr, former acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue, and former acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen for documents and communications related to the investigation of him, which began during the Trump administration.
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Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell wrote in a motion filed Wednesday that his client believes the documents would go “to the heart of his defense that this is, possibly, a vindictive or selective prosecution arising from an unrelenting pressure campaign beginning in the last administration.”
The president’s son is facing three felony charges related to a gun purchase incident from 2018, and he has pleaded not guilty in the case. Special counsel David Weiss filed the charges in Delaware in September after a plea deal fell apart over the summer.
The now-withdrawn deal involved Biden pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and entering into an agreement to avoid one felony gun charge, but a judge took issue with provisions of the deal that could have prevented prosecutors from charging Biden in the future. Weiss and Biden’s defense team hit an impasse at that point, leading to Weiss indicting Biden for the gun incident.
Lowell reiterated his accusation that Weiss “reneged” on the plea deal with his client, adding that Weiss had a “change of heart” that “appears to be in response to political pressure, rather than anything newly discovered in the investigation.”
While a judge is unlikely to grant the subpoena request, Lowell argued the subpoenas are narrow in scope, would be issued in “good faith,” and are seeking records that are “highly relevant” to his defense approach.
Lowell shed light on that approach, citing examples to illustrate his argument that Trump and Republicans successfully pressured DOJ officials to investigate and prosecute his client unfairly.
He pointed to an excerpt from Barr’s book in which Barr recalled yelling at Trump on the phone in 2020, “Dammit, Mr. President, I am not going to talk to you about Hunter Biden. Period!”
He highlighted Trump’s social media posts, including Trump asking why Barr “didn’t reveal the truth to the public, before the Election, about Hunter Biden” and accusing the DOJ of giving the first son a “mere ‘traffic ticket.'”
Lowell also used testimony from two IRS whistleblowers, who alleged this spring that they witnessed numerous irregularities in the DOJ’s case, to underscore the authority Trump’s top DOJ deputies had over the case before Trump left office.
The subpoenas come as Lowell wages an aggressive defense strategy on behalf of Biden. He has gone on offense about data made public from his client’s abandoned laptop, filing a string of lawsuits in recent months alleging the data’s dissemination was a result of illegal hacking.
He filed a lawsuit against the same IRS whistleblowers he cited in his subpoena motion, accusing them of illegally revealing the first son’s private tax information.
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Biden wrote an op-ed this month publicly condemning “partisan and craven factions” for exploiting his past struggle with drug use and addiction, and he suggested the charges Weiss brought against him were absurdly rare.
Lowell wrote Wednesday that prosecutors had not provided him any of the material outlined in the subpoena requests but that the information would be “essential to Mr. Biden’s proper preparation of his defense.”
