The son of the current US President was apparently not doing well when he bought a Colt Cobra 38SPL in his hometown of Wilmington, Delaware in October 2018. Hunter Biden, it is said, was struggling with, among other things, serious drug problems at that time. But he doesn’t seem to have mentioned this dependency when he bought it from the licensed store, otherwise the buyer wouldn’t have gotten this weapon.
He is said to have soon disposed of the revolver, but five years later the indictment of the US Department of Justice is now public, “United States of America against Hunter Robert Biden”. According to research by special investigator David Weiss, a grand jury accuses him of violating gun laws and therefore purchasing the Colt illegally.
Hunter Biden, now 53 years old, presumably signed the relevant form at the time stating that he had nothing to do with drugs. False information, it says as a warning, is a crime. Now the defendant will probably have to answer in court, which would also be unpleasant for his father in the upcoming election campaign, even though he has nothing to do with it.
Republicans are also keeping an eye on Hunter Biden’s opaque foreign dealings
The case is by no means entirely new. Biden Junior had already been charged with this gun case in Delaware and he had also already paid tax evasion, tax liability and fines. He wanted to reach an agreement with the prosecutors in order to avoid a possible prison sentence; the president’s opponents in particular were horrified. Despite their legal independence, they accused the Bidens of preferential treatment and coercion, and a judge ultimately intervened. So now a jury is indicting Hunter Biden.
Theoretically, a sentence could mean up to ten years in prison, but hardly for a first-time offender who is said to have not used the Colt and quickly thrown it away. The investigation was led by Weiss, who was appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland a month ago after the failed deal. He is also continuing to research the tax matter and is looking at whether Hunter Biden’s opaque and much-debated foreign dealings in China and Ukraine could have collided with the law. If Weiss finds what he is looking for, then this charge would potentially be followed by further charges.
The US Department of Justice is already in the strange position of simultaneously wanting to hold former President Donald Trump and the son of current President Joe Biden accountable. The Republicans in the House of Representatives even want to initiate impeachment proceedings against President Biden. So far, they claim, without evidence, that then-Vice President Biden had a hand in and profited from his son’s Ukrainian and Chinese connections.
Donald Trump also has legal problems, but the cases cannot be compared
In the next 14 months until the likely next duel between Biden and Trump, in addition to politics, there will be a lot of focus on the judiciary and probably several trials. Trump alone is facing four of them; he is accused, among other things, of conspiracy, attempted election fraud, incitement to storm the Capitol and theft of state secrets – the latter two allegations come from the other special investigator from the Justice Department, Jack Smith.
The fact that his colleague Weiss is now also going on the offensive as Special Counsel against Hunter Biden at least invalidates the Republican assumption that the Bidens, in contrast to Trump, would be spared. The cases cannot be remotely compared anyway. For Joe Biden, the cause is part of a difficult and tragic family history.
Biden’s sons Hunter and Beau Biden, who is one year older, were also in the car when his first wife Neilia, then 30, and his one-year-old daughter Naomi were killed in an accident in 1972. They survived, seriously injured; their father had just been elected to the Senate. “The first memory I have is lying in a hospital bed next to my brother,” Hunter Biden said as he delivered Beau Biden’s eulogy in 2015. He died of a brain tumor eight years ago.
Well, while the 80-year-old Biden Sr. wants to defend his office for four more years, Hunter Biden has to defend himself on a completely different issue, at least.