Hunter Biden’s lawyers withdraw motion for new gun trial

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(Reuters) -Lawyers for Hunter Biden, the son of U.S. President Joe Biden, on Monday withdrew a filing seeking a new trial in his federal gun case, moments after the motion was uploaded to his case’s docket in Delaware federal court, according to a note on a court document website.

“The Motion for a New Trial (formerly DI 233) has been deleted at the request of counsel,” the note filed to the docket website read, describing it as a “correcting entry”.

Biden’s lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the action. A spokeswoman for government prosecutors declined to comment.

Hunter Biden became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a felony earlier this month. A jury found him guilty on all three counts related to his lying about illegal drug use when he purchased a handgun in 2018.

Other entries on the docket for the case have been deleted and corrected versions were later refiled.

The withdrawn motion argued the U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware, did not have jurisdiction over the case when it proceeded to trial.

At the time of the trial, Hunter Biden had a pending request for the full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia to review a ruling by U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika declining to dismiss the charges.

Noreika had rejected the argument that the gun charges should be dismissed following a 2022 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court that expanded gun rights.

A three-judge panel of the appeals court in Philadelphia upheld Noreika’s ruling, but the appeals court still has not ruled on a request by Hunter Biden to have the appeal reconsidered by the full Third Circuit court.

(Reporting by Costas Pitas and Tom Hals; editing by Rami Ayyub and Deepa Babington)