A Delaware jury on Tuesday found Hunter Biden guilty on all three gun charges after only several hours of deliberating.
The historic verdict of the president’s son reflects Hunter’s high stakes gamble to go to trial instead of accepting a revised plea deal proposed in the summer of 2023.
Hunter faces up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 of files, court filings say.
There is typically a two to three month delay between conviction and sentencing in the federal system. “We don’t yet know what the sentencing guidelines would be if he’s convicted on all counts,” NBC News reported, “but one legal expert said they likely would specify around a year in prison.”
Hunter’s gun trial judge, Maryellen Noreika, recently delivered a one-year sentence to a defendant in a similar gun case. The defense asked for a six-month sentence, but Noreika gave him one year.
The government charged Hunter with one count of false statement in the purchase of a firearm, one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance, and one count of false statement related to information required to be kept by a federal firearms licensed dealer.
Hunter used crack when he purchased the firearm in 2018, according to a wide variety of photos from the time on his abandoned laptop, and the gun was found discarded in a public trash can next to a school. The Secret Service allegedly intervened in the investigation of that incident.
The prosecution brought ten witnesses to the stand, while the defense only brought one witness, Naomi Biden Neal. Her testimony appeared to backfire when she appeared to make Hunter look “erratic” to the jury, according to court reporters.
Hunter’s legal defense was likely hoping for jury nullification, legal experts warned last week. Jury nullification occurs when a defendant is proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt but jurors disregard their oath to find the defendant not guilty.
The defense largely tried to paint Hunter as a victim of drug abuse. Defense attorney Abbe Lowell argued prosecutors must prove that Hunter “knowingly” committed gun offenses.
The government’s argument turned on the idea that “no one is above the law” and that “it doesn’t matter who you are or what your name is.” Hunter “chose to illegally own a firearm,” and “we’re also here because he chose to lie,” prosecutors argued.
“All of this is not evidence,” prosecutor Leo Wise gestured around the courtroom at the Biden family watching closing arguments on Monday. “People sitting in the gallery are not evidence.”
In 2023, Hunter refused to accept a plea deal from prosecutors after negotiations fell apart under judicial scrutiny of a “diversion agreement.”
The original “sweetheart” plea deal gave Hunter the option to plead guilty to not paying taxes on more than $1.5 million in income in 2017 and 2018, receiving probation rather than jail time. In addition, Special Counsel David Weiss devised a separate diversion agreement that gave Hunter immunity from potential future charges, including a provision to potentially wipe a felony gun violation from his record.
Weiss later indicted Hunter with tax violations in California. The trial is set for September.
The case is United States v. Hunter Biden, No. 24-1703 in the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Wendell Husebo is a political reporter with Breitbart News and a former GOP War Room Analyst. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality. Follow Wendell on “X” @WendellHusebø or on Truth Social @WendellHusebo.
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