Hunter Biden has been indicted on three counts of gun charges linked to a purchase of a handgun on Oct. 12, 2018. Biden is accused of committing perjury when he falsely stated on his ATF Form 4473 that he had not used illegal drugs in the year before buying the gun. He wrote in his 2021 memoir Beautiful Things that he had used crack cocaine on an almost daily basis.
When Hunter Biden’s plea deal imploded in July, an indictment became all but inevitable. An agreement Republicans panned as a “sweetheart deal” and Federal District Judge Maryellen Norieka tossed would have shielded Hunter Biden from prosecution from other crimes. The so-called Diversion Agreement would have seen this charge dropped in exchange for Biden remaining sober for two years and not attempting to purchase any firearms. The judge told the defense and the prosecution she believed it was an improper conflation of his gun and tax charges because she believed they were separate issues.
Hunter Biden said in court in July that he would not have pleaded guilty if it had not been for the Diversion Agreement.
Norieka gave prosecutors and representatives of Hunter Biden until Sept. 1 to hammer out a new deal, but they were not able to come to terms.
Norieka dismissed federal misdemeanor tax charges that had been filed against Biden so they could be refiled in California, where he lives, or in Washington, D.C., where his businesses were based. The tax charges could be damaging for President Joe Biden in the wake of the opening of an impeachment inquiry against him should Hunter’s finances connect with the president’s bank accounts.
Republicans View U.S. Attorney as Untrustworthy
That did not come to fruition. Now Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss has filed charges in the aftermath of the collapse of the plea deal. The Washington Post reported last month that Weiss previously worked with Hunter’s late brother Beau Biden while the latter served as Delaware’s attorney general.
Congressional Republicans have pointed to this as evidence that Weiss is untrustworthy.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss, who has headed the Biden investigation since 2018, as special counsel last month.
“Today’s charges are a very small start, but unless U.S. Attorney Weiss investigates everyone involved in the fraud schemes and influence peddling, it will be clear President Biden’s DOJ is protecting Hunter Biden and the big guy,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, a lead committee chairman overseeing the Republican impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, said in a statement to ABC News.
Is Hunter Biden Going To Jail? His Lawyers Say He Will Beat It
Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell says he believes that his client has a good chance to beat the charges.
“If people have paid attention, the only law that’s changed [since the plea deal dissolved] has been a court of appeals in the federal system that has called that statute unconstitutional,” Lowell said earlier this month in an interview on MSNBC.
Lowell noted that Delaware prosecutors had not charged anyone under this statute as a standalone matter.
John Rossomando is a defense and counterterrorism analyst and served as Senior Analyst for Counterterrorism at The Investigative Project on Terrorism for eight years. His work has been featured in numerous publications such as The American Thinker, The National Interest, National Review Online, Daily Wire, Red Alert Politics, CNSNews.com, The Daily Caller, Human Events, Newsmax, The American Spectator, TownHall.com, and Crisis Magazine. He also served as senior managing editor of The Bulletin, a 100,000-circulation daily newspaper in Philadelphia, and received the Pennsylvania Associated Press Managing Editors first-place award for his reporting.
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