The judge who presided over Hunter Biden’s trial for illegally purchasing a firearm while addicted to crack cocaine has terminated all further proceedings in the first son’s case following the pardon from President Biden. But she declined to dismiss his indictment altogether.  

Judge Maryellen Noreika — who, like Special Counsel David Weiss, was nominated to her position by President Trump — announced in a court filing Tuesday that the proceedings would be terminated. Mr. Biden was set to be sentenced to as many as ten years in prison later this month. 

“Having reviewed the parties’ submissions and in the absence of binding precedent, IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that pursuant to the Executive Grant of Clemency signed by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr. on December 1, 2024, Defendant Robert Hunter Biden has been pardoned for, inter alia, the offenses for which a jury rendered a verdict in this case,” Judge Noreika writes. “As such, all proceedings in this case are hereby terminated.”

The Delaware gun case was the source of acute embarrassment for the Biden family when it went to trial over the course of two weeks earlier this summer. Text messages and emails from the first son’s infamous laptop, as well as excerpts from his memoir detailing his addiction, were read aloud in the courtroom for the assembled family members to hear. First Lady Jill Biden, the president’s brother, James Biden, and the first daughter, Ashley Biden, were all present for the vast majority of the proceedings. At one point, Ms. Biden excused herself because she had grown emotional as prosecutors read painful details from her brother’s book. 

In a low point of the trial, Hallie Biden, the widow of Mr. Biden’s elder brother, Beau, and mother of two of the president’s grandchildren, testified about how she used crack with the first son during their star-crossed romance following Biden’s death from brain cancer in 2015.

Just weeks after that highly emotional and embarrassing trial ended in multiple felony convictions, Mr. Biden agreed to plead guilty to several counts of evading his taxes and taking improper write-offs while he was addicted to drugs between 2016 and 2019. As Judge Mark Scarsi and Special Counsel David Weiss were preparing for jury selection, Mr. Biden announced he would plead guilty to save face for his family. 

Mr. Biden is now asking Judge Scarsi to dismiss his tax indictment altogether — something Judge Noreika declined to do on Tuesday. 

Mr. Weiss’s top prosecutors — Leo Wise and Derek Hines — strenuously pushed back against the dismissal of the indictment outright, as it would represent an attempt by Mr. Biden to have his charges “wiped away.” They say that while he will evade punishment, he should still have the indictment on his record and he should not be allowed to argue that he was the victim of a vindictive or political prosecution. 

“There was none and never has been any evidence of vindictive or selective prosecution in this case. The defendant made similar baseless accusations in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,” Messrs. Wise and Hines wrote to Judge Scarsi on Monday, asking him to simply terminate proceedings against Mr. Biden rather than wiping his record clean. 

They pointed out that Mr. Biden had argued several times in court that he was the victim of a weaponized justice system — an argument his father repeated in a statement accompanying the pardon for the first son on Sunday night. Both Judge Scarsi and Judge Noreika found no evidence of any political bias and ruled against Mr. Biden on all of his motions for dismissal on those grounds. 

“The Executive Branch that charged Defendant is headed by that sitting President — Defendant’s father. The Attorney General heading the DOJ was appointed by and reports to Defendant’s father. And that Attorney General appointed the Special Counsel who made the challenged charging decision in this case — while Defendant’s father was still the sitting President,” Judge Noreika wrote in denying Mr. Biden’s motion for dismissal back in April. 

While Judge Noreika has terminated proceedings, Judge Scarsi has yet to issue his ruling in California on whether or not Mr. Biden’s indictment will be dismissed in its entirety.