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Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, attends a Medal of Honor Ceremony in the East Room at the White House in Washington on July 3, 2024 (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA/ AP Images).
Hunter Biden has voluntarily relinquished his license to practice law in the District of Columbia, according to a Tuesday court filing.
The move caps a monthslong effort by bar authorities in the nation’s capital to revoke the onetime presidential son’s legal privileges.
In late June 2024, the D.C. Bar Office of Disciplinary Counsel and Board on Professional Responsibility began the process to seek the suspension of the younger Biden’s law license in the wake of his multiple federal felony convictions for lying on a gun application.
Now, ex-president Joe Biden’s adult son will avoid the likelihood of a long, drawn-out legal scuffle over whether that gun conviction – along with his guilty pleas in a tax evasion case – necessitated disbarment.
To be clear, Hunter Biden has now been formally disbarred – but the underlying issues related to those convictions and the subsequent pardons he received from his father, will no longer be hashed out.
Filed in the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, the consent motion is relatively threadbare – sparing the details of the “consent to disbarment” which Hunter Biden offered up and which bar authorities accepted.
The terms of the consent agreement, in fact, essentially bar the release of the details contained in the affidavit Hunter Biden was required to file in order have the licensing dispute resolved.
“[T]he affidavit required under [the relevant ethical rule] shall not be publicly disclosed or made available for use in any other proceeding except by order of the Court or upon written consent of the attorney,” the consent motion reads – citing Washington, D.C., Bar rules.
The contents of the affidavit are discussed in another document filed to put a kibosh on the case, but bar authorities asked the judge overseeing the matter to file that motion under seal – a request the court will almost certainly grant with little attention or fanfare.
In their case against Hunter Biden, bar authorities cited Rule XI, which requires suspension for any attorney found guilty of a felony.
In the underlying gun case, the once fortunate son was found guilty by a jury of his peers on all three counts against him — a quick denouement to a case dating back to 2018. Hunter Biden animatedly fought the tax charges for a few more months – before stunning federal prosecutors in court with an abrupt plea change.
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The agreement to forego practicing law in the federal district does not mean the end of Hunter Biden’s time in the legal system.
The 46th president’s son has an extant federal libel suit against former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne. The plaintiff claims the defendant defamed him during a June 2023 interview — and then again in October 2023. That case was filed in the Central District of California.
Last week, Dick Harpootlian, a South Carolina attorney who previously defended convicted murderer Alex Murdaugh, announced that he would be representing Hunter Biden in the defamation case.
