The latest indication that the younger Biden’s legal troubles may affect his father’s reelection bid next year is the criminal accusation brought against U.S. President Joe Biden’s son Hunter on Thursday for duping a gun dealer into selling him a handgun.
Hunter Biden was charged with three criminal offenses for allegedly lying about the fact that he was using illegal narcotics at the time, which would have made it illegal for him to possess a pistol under the law. This is the first time a sitting president’s child has ever been indicted. The case was filed in U.S. District Court in Delaware.
The accusations guarantee that judicial drama will take center stage in the 2024 presidential race in the United States as Joe Biden, 80, runs for reelection against his Republican rival Donald Trump, 77, who is scheduled to testify in four impending criminal cases.
David Weiss, US Special counsel
David Weiss, the recently promoted U.S. Special Counsel, has filed additional accusations against Hunter Biden, although they contain no mention of any transgressions of American tax law. In a shocking change of events in a July hearing, an earlier agreement under which Hunter Biden, 53, would have admitted guilt to two misdemeanor tax charges and enrolled in a program to avoid prosecution on the gun charge crumbled.
Weiss previously stated that any potential charges would have to be presented in either the District of Columbia or the Central District of California, which is situated in Los Angeles, but the tax investigation into Biden is still underway.
The younger Biden was charged with lying about his drug use when he bought a Colt Cobra handgun in October 2018.
Joe Biden’s impeachment investigation
Image source: AP
The action was taken two days after House Republicans launched an impeachment investigation on Joe Biden because of Hunter Biden’s international business dealings. The White House has criticized the action as being politically driven and unsupported as it was taken without the support of the entire House.
White House officials declined to respond. Weiss declined to comment through a spokeswoman.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court last year in a historic decision enlarged gun rights under the U.S. Constitution’s Second Amendment, which protects the right to carry arms, some legal experts have stated that any firearms-related charges against Biden could be subject to a constitutional challenge.
Weiss was given special counsel status in August after years of probing Hunter Biden’s financial transactions as the U.S. attorney in the state of Delaware, where the Democratic president is from. Weiss was initially put forward by Trump.
Trump and his allies
Trump and his Republican allies have relentlessly attacked the younger Biden for years, accusing him of misconduct in relation to China and the Ukraine among other things. Hunter Biden has had positions as a lobbyist, attorney, investment banker, and artist. He has also openly discussed his battles with addiction.
Republicans have gathered testimony that Joe Biden occasionally joined calls with his son’s business partners, but they have not yet shown proof that the president directly benefited from this.
In December 2020, Hunter Biden said that Weiss’s office was looking into his tax troubles. He has asserted his innocence.
When Biden became office in January 2021, the Justice Department urged most of the U.S. attorneys Trump nominated to resign, but Weiss was given an exception.
Image source: Reuters
Hunter Biden never worked for his father’s presidential campaign or the White House. The president has stated that he has not spoken with his son about his international business operations and that his Justice Department will act independently in any investigations involving members of his family.
Trump and other Republicans have contended that Hunter Biden’s membership on the board of the Ukrainian energy business Burisma while his father served as vice president to Democratic President Barack Obama created conflicts of interest. In a phone call in July 2019, Trump requested that the president of Ukraine initiate an inquiry against Joe and Hunter Biden in the run-up to the U.S. presidential election.
In response to these actions, the House of Representatives, which is controlled by Democrats, voted to impeach Trump; however, the Senate eventually decided to retain him in office.
Hunter Biden
In his memoir published in 2021, Hunter Biden discussed his struggles with alcoholism and crack cocaine addiction. According to sources at the time, he was released from the U.S. Navy Reserve in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.
Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, are his only living offspring. His daughter Naomi Biden passed away as a baby following a vehicle accident that also claimed the life of Joe Biden’s first wife, and his son Beau Biden passed away from cancer in 2015.
According to Aaron Crawford, a specialist in presidential history at the University of Tennessee, Hunter Biden looks to be the first child of a president in office to be charged with a crime.
