Hunter Biden confronts substantial evidence against him in his gun case, with a genuine risk of a felony conviction, a fate he nearly avoided through a series of contentious events last summer.
Special Counsel David Weiss, the U.S. Attorney for Delaware, entered the trial this week with a solid foundation and many facts in his favor, though legal experts remain divided on the fairness of the case’s emergence.
Biden faces three felonies and the potential for months or even years of imprisonment due to allegations that he lied about his drug use on a federal form to purchase a revolver in 2018 and illegally kept the firearm for 11 days while being an unlawful drug user.
The Delaware U.S. Attorney’s Office rarely presses charges under the laws Biden is accused of violating, as seen in the last decade of court records there.
Nonetheless, conservative attorney and former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy told the Truth Voices the case is justified.
“Hunter Biden acquired the gun and handled it carelessly, resulting in its disposal near a school. Such a case should be charged every time,” McCarthy stated, adding that Democrats, typically advocates for gun control, should be pleased the DOJ is enforcing these laws.
President Joe Biden, a supporter of stricter gun laws, finds himself in a difficult position having signed a bill that strengthened penalties for the charge now facing his own son.
More unusual than Hunter Biden’s charges, brought by his father’s Department of Justice, is the unique trial scene.
Secret Service agents guard the proceedings. Alongside Hunter Biden, various family members, including first lady Jill Biden, have appeared in court as supporters or witnesses. Some witnesses have stated they received immunity deals to avoid self-incrimination while testifying. The courtroom and an overflow room are filled with reporters observing deeply personal evidence about Hunter Biden’s struggles with addiction and tumultuous relationships.
How Hunter’s Case Began
Prosecutors discovered the evidence during a five-year federal investigation into the first son, which drew national media attention and intense scrutiny from Republicans who initially believed he was receiving preferential treatment.
Charles Oberly, a former Delaware attorney general and Weiss’s former superior at the U.S. Attorney’s Office, noted the rarity of the gun charges and expressed disbelief over the allocation of resources to such a case.
“When viewed against those [gun charge] statistics, the choice to make an example of the younger Biden raises, at a minimum, questions,” Oberly stated in an op-ed for USA Today.
The investigation into Hunter Biden was always more complex than a single incident related to a gun purchase.
It began in late 2018 as “an offshoot of an investigation the IRS was conducting into a foreign-based amateur online pornography platform,” Gary Shapley, one of the criminal investigators at the time, told Congress.
When the FBI obtained Hunter Biden’s notorious laptop by subpoenaing a repair shop for it the following year, it evolved into a white-collar investigation into potential tax crimes and Foreign Agents Registration Act violations.
Plea Bargain Collapse
Weiss eventually negotiated a plea deal in the summer of 2023 that would have allowed Hunter Biden to avoid felony charges by pleading guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses, while also avoiding a gun violation, but with a stipulation that he could still face charges for other offenses in the future.
That deal was consistent with DOJ cases with “similar fact patterns,” former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori wrote in a column.
Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Donald Trump appointee presiding over the gun case, unexpectedly rejected certain provisions of the deal at a hearing last July. She offered Hunter Biden and Weiss the opportunity to address the immunity aspects, but they reached an impasse on how to continue. Later that year, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss as a special counsel, leading to Hunter Biden being charged with gun offenses in Delaware and nine tax charges in California.
“There are legitimate reasons to believe this case should never have reached a jury, based on a clear-eyed view of how the American legal system typically functions,” Khardori wrote, noting Noreika seemed “bothered” by the underwhelming charges in the deal.
All of this occurred against the backdrop of Republicans in Congress publicly criticizing the DOJ for what they termed a failed “sweetheart” deal and a lack of accountability for Hunter Biden’s actions, driven by political considerations. When the tax charges were subsequently filed, they praised the indictment, attributing it to whistleblowers revealing what they saw as the DOJ’s initial intention to let the first son off lightly.
Oberly suggested the DOJ improperly succumbed to congressional pressure.
“Addicts and non-addicts alike make mistakes daily; no office has the capacity or desire to prosecute every infraction,” he said. “Certainly, no office should pursue felony convictions and jail time in a misguided attempt to appease either side of Congress.”
McCarthy argued that the suggestion Hunter Biden has been unfairly targeted and is now facing a prosecution that the average American would not encounter is a “specious argument.”
Considering the congressional investigations, indictments, leaks of Hunter Biden’s computer data, and his own admissions in his memoir, it became clear his adult behavior was atypical, and possibly not entirely lawful. His life included periods of crack cocaine and alcohol addiction interspersed with global adventures using his father’s name to earn millions from foreign entities.
“If Hunter hadn’t been Biden’s son, he’d have been prosecuted back in late 2018 or early 2019 — instead, the prosecutor did nothing for 5 years then tried to make the case disappear,” McCarthy noted. “The average defendant does not receive such leniency.”
