Federal Judge Tosses Suit That Would Have Forced Hunter Biden to Be Registered as a Foreign Agent

A federal judge dismissed a case in which a Stephen Miller-founded group sought to have Hunter Biden registered as a foreign agent by the DOJ.

In a decision handed down on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in D.C. (first reported on by Law360), Biden-appointed Judge Jia M. Cobb found that the Miller-founded America First Legal Foundation effectively lacked standing to bring the case — as the group failed to establish it suffered injury as a result of Hunter Biden not being registered as a foreign agent.

America First Legal Foundation argued that because of Hunter Biden’s ties to the Ukrainian energy firm Burisma, as well as the China Energy Fund Committee, he should have had to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). The group claimed it suffered “informational injury” over the government’s failure to register Hunter Biden as a foreign agent. But Judge Cobb found that “the foundation has not plausibly alleged an injury.”

Special Counsel David Weiss — a Republican — testified in June 2025 that he believed there was insufficient evidence to prove that Hunter Biden had acted as a foreign agent.

“We didn’t have enough evidence to prove that Hunter Biden had acted as an agent of a foreign principal and had engaged in political activity in that regard,” Weiss told the House Judiciary Committee. “We just couldn’t put together a sufficient case.”

In her ruling Tuesday, Judge Cobb said that because Hunter Biden is not currently registered as a foreign agent, “there is nothing for the government to disclose.”

The lawsuit was originally brought by the America First Legal Foundation in 2023, while Merrick Garland was Attorney General. In a bit of an odd quirk, acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is shown as the defendant in the case in Tuesday’s filing, as the current head of the DOJ.

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