Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, has been indicted for three felony weapons charges. ABC News. Biden is charged for lying on his ATF form 4473 which asks if you are addicted to drugs. Near the same time Hunter Biden bought his handgun, a .38 Special Colt Cobra, he had admitted in his biography that he was a daily user of crack cocaine. Biden has been charged two counts of lying while purchasing a firearm and a third count of being a drug addict illegally obtaining a firearm. Together the charges would impose a maximum of 25 years. Biden had made a deal with prosecutors where he would plea to two misdemeanor tax charges and a pre-trial diversion for the gun charge but the deal fell apart after the judge ruled that the immunity would have included charges far beyond the scope of the deal. The law Biden is charged under has recently been challenged and ruled unconstitutional in the 5th Circuit, but would not apply since Biden's case was in Delaware.
My Comment:
There is quite a bit of irony in this. Joe Biden has been a champion for gun control and a foe for gun rights for as long as he has been in power. Now his son has been charged with a serious gun crime and his only hope is that the gun rights community's recent victory in NYSRPA v Bruen allows Hunter to get off the hook.
Still, Hunter Biden's behavior was so egregious here that he absolutely should have been charged. It's an open and shut case because all the prosecutors need to prove is that Hunter Biden was a drug addict when he bought the Colt Cobra. Given that there are dozens of leaked pictures taken around the time he bought the gun where he was smoking crack and the fact that he admitted as much in his biography, it's going to be extremely easy to prove.
Indeed, Biden has no real hope other than some other kind of plea deal being made or the law changing. Given how the last plea deal, the so called "sweetheart deal" that would have covered all of his criminal behavior, fell apart dramatically I don't see that happening. At least not a deal that ends with him without a felony criminal conviction. I guess he could still make one that would keep him out of prison for 25 years but even that is no sure thing.
As for the law changing it is very possible. NYSRPA v Bruen was one of the biggest Supreme Court cases ever and the strict standard it set puts a lot of gun laws in jeopardy, including the background check law. The 5th Circuit has already ruled that the drug question fails to meet the standard set in Bruen where there had to be a historical precedent for the law to go against the right to keep and bear arms. So far that only applies in that circuit, Delaware is in the 3rd Circuit so it wouldn't apply there anyways, but there could be more cases working their way through the pipeline.
Indeed, it could be Hunter Biden's case that could do it if he and his lawyers were so inclined and I think they would have a good chance at it, given how strict the Bruen standard is and the 5th Circuit's ruling. Doing so would be hilarious as the background check law is pretty popular and there are going to be a lot of people wondering why the son of an anti-gun president is making such a pro-gun argument.
Does this hurt Joe Biden's 2024 chances? I'm not sure. The general thought has been that if people had been exposed to Hunter Biden's rather dramatic criminal activity the 2024 election would have easily gone to Trump, but that obviously didn't happen because big tech covered it up and called it "misinformation" when it was clearly true. Nobody can really deny that Hunter Biden is a criminal scumbag now so it could taint Joe Biden, especially considering the accusations against himself.
On the other hand, I get the feeling that Biden's corruption is already baked into his candidacy. I doubt people will be thinking about Hunter Biden's gun charges when the voting actually happens, and it's also not even clear if Joe Biden will be the candidate given his advanced age, criminal behavior and low poll ratings.
The good news is that this may restore a tiny bit of faith in the criminal justice system, which isn't saying a whole lot these days. Hunter Biden's behavior here was really beyond the pale and it really seemed like he was acting like being the president's son would get him out of anything. When his behavior was this egregious? He is going to be charged.
Of course I don't have too much faith in our system when Donald Trump is facing ridiculous charges in an attempt to stop him from winning in 2024 and many January 6th defendants are rotting in jail or prison, some who weren't even there. Indeed, I fully expect to see yet another indictment against Donald Trump for some nonsense in response to this indictment.
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