Joe Biden’s son found guilty of three felonies in federal gun trial

Hunter Biden has been convicted of all three felonies related to the purchase of a handgun in 2018 when, prosecutors argued, the president’s son lied on a required gun purchase form. Jurors found Hunter Biden guilty of lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false statement on the application by saying he did not use drugs and illegally possessing the gun for 11 days.

He faces up to 25 years in prison when sentenced by Judge Maryellen Noreika, although first-time offenders are nowhere near the maximum, and it is unclear whether she would give him time behind bars.

Now, Hunter Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, President Joe Biden’s main political rival, have been convicted by American juries in an election year that has revolved around both the courts and campaign events and rallies. Joe Biden has stayed away from the Delaware federal courtroom where his son was tried and said little about the case, fearful of appearing to interfere in a criminal matter brought by his own Justice Department. But the Democrat’s allies are concerned about the toll the trial (and now conviction) will take on the 81-year-old, who has long been concerned about the health and sustained sobriety of his only living child.

Both Hunter Biden and Trump have argued that they were victims of the politics of the moment. But while Trump has continued to falsely claim that the verdict was “rigged,” Joe Biden has said that he would accept the results of the verdict and would not seek to pardon his son.

Hunter Biden’s legal problems are not over. He faces a trial in September in California accused of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes, and congressional Republicans have signaled they will continue to pursue him in their stalled impeachment bid against the president. The president has not been accused or accused of any crime by prosecutors investigating his son. The prosecution spent much of the trial highlighting the severity of Hunter Biden’s drug problem, through highly personal testimony and embarrassing evidence.

Jurors heard Hunter Biden’s ex-wife and an ex-girlfriend testify about his habitual crack use and her failed efforts to help him detox. Jurors saw images of the president’s son bare-chested and disheveled in a dirty room, and half-naked holding crack pipes. And jurors saw a crack video of him weighing himself on a scale. Hunter Biden did not testify, but jurors heard his voice when prosecutors played audio excerpts from his 2021 memoir “Beautiful Things,” in which he talks about hitting rock bottom after his brother Beau Biden’s death in 2015 and his descent. to drugs before his eventual sobriety.

Prosecutors believed the evidence was necessary to show that Hunter, 54, was mired in addiction when he purchased the gun and therefore lied when he checked “no” on the form that asked whether he was “an unlawful user or addicted to “Drugs.

Defense attorney Abbe Lowell had argued that Hunter Biden’s mental state was different when he wrote the book than when he bought the gun, when he did not believe he had an addiction. Lowell pointed out to jurors that some of the questions in the firearms transaction record are in the present tense, such as “are you an illegal user or addict of” drugs?

And Lowell suggested that Hunter Biden might have felt like he had a drinking problem at the time, but not a drug problem. Alcohol abuse does not prevent the purchase of weapons. Hunter Biden hoped last year to resolve a long-running federal investigation with a deal with prosecutors that would avoid the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election. Under the deal, he would have pleaded guilty to lesser tax crimes and avoided the prosecution in the weapons case if he had stayed out of trouble for two years. But the deal fell apart after Noreika, a Trump nominee, questioned unusual aspects of the proposed deal and lawyers were unable to resolve the matter.

Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed lead investigator David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, as a special prosecutor last August, and Hunter Biden was indicted a month later. Hunter Biden has said he was charged because the Justice Department bowed to pressure from Republicans who argued the Democratic president’s son was receiving special treatment.

The reason authorities raised questions about the revolver is because Hallie Biden, Beau Biden’s widow, found it unloaded in Hunter’s truck on October 23, 2018, panicked and threw it into a trash can in Janssen’s Market, where a man inadvertently fished it out of the trash. She testified about the episode in court.

Hallie Biden, who had a romantic relationship with Hunter after Beau Biden’s death, eventually called the police. Officers recovered the gun from the man who inadvertently took it along with other recyclables from the trash. The case was ultimately closed due to lack of cooperation from Hunter Biden, who was considered the victim. Source: Infobae

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