By Zachary Stieber
Contributing Writer
A court in Washington on Tuesday suspended the law license of President Joe Biden’s son after he was convicted of three federal felonies.
The District of Columbia Court of Appeals ordered Hunter Biden’s license suspended immediately, rendering him legally unable to represent clients in the nation’s capital, and directed the D.C. Bar’s Board on Professional Responsibility to launch an investigation into Biden.
A lawyer for Biden, 54, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
A jury in Delaware earlier in June convicted Biden of lying on an application to buy a firearm when he claimed he was not a drug user or addict. Biden said in his memoir that he was using drugs at the time he bought the gun. He was also convicted of illegally possessing the firearm he purchased.
The Office of the Disciplinary Counsel, which investigates cases against members of the D.C. Bar, after the conviction recommended the D.C. Court of Appeals suspend Biden.
The office cited bar rules that say felonies constitute “serious crimes” and that attorneys found guilty of a serious crime, or who enter a no contest plea to a charge of a serious crime, shall be immediately suspended by the court.
D.C. code states that when a final judgment of a conviction is certified to a court, “the name of the member of the bar so convicted shall be struck from the roll of the members of the bar and such person shall thereafter cease to be a member.”
The only exception is if a pardon is issued, according to the code.
President Biden has said that he accepts the jury’s verdict in his son’s case and that he will not pardon his son or commute his sentence.
A notice of the recommendation from the office was provided to Abbe Lowell, a lawyer who represented Hunter Biden in the case, according to the office.
Biden, 54, graduated from Yale Law School in 1996 and has had a law license in Washington since April 9, 2007. He is still listed on the bar website as of Tuesday as a member in good standing.
He faces up to 25 years in prison for the felonies, although under sentencing recommendations he will likely receive a much shorter sentence.
Biden also faces three felonies and six misdemeanors in California for allegedly intentionally failing to pay taxes in several years. Biden, who has pleaded not guilty, is scheduled to go on trial on those charges in September.
Motion for New Trial
Lowell, meanwhile, in a filing on Monday requested a new trial.
Lowell said that the trial wrongly took place even though a federal appeals court, which dismissed Biden’s appeals, did not formally clear the trial court to proceed.
“Naturally, any district court action taken after it has been divested of jurisdiction by an appeal must be vacated,” Lowell and other members of Biden’s legal team wrote in the filing, which was lodged with the federal court in Delaware that held the trial.
Attempts to seek dismissal of the charges, centered on arguments that the law which Biden was accused of violating was too vague and therefore unconstitutional, and that the law violated his rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, were rejected by the trial court and the appeals court before the trial.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied the attempts, Biden’s lawyers acknowledged, but the court “did not then and has not yet issued its mandate as to the orders dismissing either appeal” they said, meaning “when this court empaneled the jury on June 3, 2024, and proceeded to trial, it was without jurisdiction to do so.”
