This is an unprecedented and risky episode for the campaign of American President Joe Biden: the trial for illegal possession of a weapon of his son, Hunter, opens this Monday, June 3 in federal court.
With a past strewn with addictions and former dubious affairs abroad, Hunter Biden is one of the favored targets of his father’s Republican adversaries, starting with his predecessor Donald Trump, who consider him to be the heel of Joe Biden’s Achilles. The opening of his trial comes days after Donald Trump was found guilty of accounting falsifications in his criminal trial in New York.
Hunter Biden, 54, is accused by federal prosecutors of lying when filling out forms to acquire a gun in 2018, in which he denied a drug addiction that he later admitted to. Also indicted for tax fraud in another case, he is defending himself here on three counts to which he pleaded not guilty in October.
A jury in Wilmington, the Biden stronghold in the state of Delaware, in the eastern United States, will have to decide on two counts relating to the possibly fraudulent filling out of documents necessary for the purchase of a firearm , and a third on the illegal possession of this weapon.
Fatherly love
Hunter Biden, a lawyer by training then a lobbyist, fell into alcoholism and drugs before emerging from his torments. Joe Biden, although he has never spoken in detail about his youngest son’s legal troubles, has always assured him of his paternal love. But the Democrats have no interest in the news of this trial – and possible remarks that Joe Biden could make to the media on this subject – replacing the press headlines on the conviction of Donald Trump in New York, explain CNNwhich reports that the American president must spend Monday in Wilmington, Delaware, at the same place where the jury is to meet.
If convicted after trial, Hunter Biden could be sentenced to a maximum of 25 years in prison – although in practice, few convicted of similar offenses actually go behind bars.
“Beautiful things”
During the two weeks of hearing planned, his book “Les Belles Choses” (2021) will undoubtedly be summoned, in which he recounts the vodka drunk from the bottle, the nocturnal wanderings in search of crack around seedy convenience stores, the failed attempts detoxification, fleeting romances with his brother’s widow… Hunter Biden claims to have finished four years of addiction in 2019 – that is to say after the controversial purchase of the revolver. However, in 2018, on a form for purchasing a firearm, he described himself as not a drug addict – a contradiction at the heart of the prosecution’s argument, considering that this is a lie, punishable by American law. But the defense disputes this lie, arguing that Hunter Biden did not consider himself, at the time of filling out the form, to be a drug addict.
In Congress, elected Republican officials have opened an impeachment investigation against Joe Biden, accusing him of having used his influence when he was vice-president of Barack Obama (2009-2017) to allow his son Hunter to make business in China and Ukraine. But no evidence has really been provided on this subject, and the courts have not charged him in this regard.
Hunter Biden was also indicted in December for tax fraud, accused of having evaded, through a “scheme”, the obligation to pay $1.4 million in taxes. He has pleaded not guilty and a trial is expected this year in California