Welcome back. Attorneys for President Biden's son Hunter,
are asking a federal judge in Los Angeles today to
toss out tax related charges filed against him.
Hunter Biden's lawyers argue the charges are politically motivated,
an argument that prosecutors have vehemently denied.
If the case goes forward,
the trial is set to take place in June,
just months before the presidential election.
Joining me now is NBC News Justice reporter Ryan Riley.
So talk to us about what this hearing was all
about.
What what is Hunter Biden's team asking the judge to
do?
Essentially, they're they want the case dismissed and they're arguing
these case,
this case would never have been brought against a similarly
situated other figure,
That this is only really because he's the president's son,
because the special counsel was appointed,
and ultimately because they're caving to pressure from House Republicans.
This has been a major issue going on when you
have House Republicans repeatedly pointing to Hunter Biden.
That's obviously been a major topic on Capitol Hill in
recent months and even in years.
So they basically are saying that these this case would
have never been brought up against somebody else.
It's only because he's the president's son that these,
this case is really being brought forward.
And you know, essentially it's one of those things where
when you're,
when you're hammer, everything looks like a nail,
right. And like in the special counsel situation,
it's very rare for them not to indict someone.
And that's what happened here.
They went after someone. That's usually the outcome when you
.1 of these special counsels,
except, of course, in the case of the president of
the United States.
And I would imagine, though a judge leans on precedent
in a situation like this,
and this is a pretty unprecedented situation,
right. So is the judge going to have to rule
based on.
Just his view of the law,
not based on prior case law.
Yeah, I mean I think it's a,
it's an uphill battle for them to get these cases
tossed because you have to have perfectly comparable situations and
that's unlikely.
On the gun charge, the separate case out of Delaware,
that is a little bit different because I mean I've
covered a lot of those cases and those cases really
are really rare,
those gun charges because typically when you see those,
it's like because someone was a white supremacist and had
a gun and that's the way they went after them
with because they were also a user of an illegal
drug. So that actually is a very rare charge.
But the tax charges, it's a little bit more in
the weeds and really complicated,
but it is not. Extremely common for those charges to
be brought if especially if someone had already paid back
the debt that they owed.
And we did hear from Judge scarcely earlier.
In what sense did you get from his line of
questioning?
We don't expect an answer necessarily today,
but you know, he's definitely hearing the arguments from everyone
here and we'll ultimately hear probably pretty soon down the
line.
OK, Ryan Riley, thank you for being here.
We appreciate it.