Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden was found guilty on Tuesday by the American courts of illegal possession of a firearm in 2018, against a backdrop of crack addiction, and in the midst of the president’s campaign for his re-election against Donald Trump.
Barely had this trial concluded in Wilmington, Delaware, stronghold of the Biden family, very present during two weeks of hearings, the 81-year-old leader went by helicopter to meet his 54-year-old younger son whom he hugged in his arms on an air base in this small east coast state.
“I am the president but I am also a father. (First Lady) Jill (Biden) and I love our son and are so proud of the man he is today,” he previously wrote in a statement after showing him his “infinite love” at the start of his trial.
The Democrat, who will face his predecessor and Republican rival Donald Trump on November 5, however, pledged not to pardon his son in the event of guilt and reaffirmed “accepting the conclusion of this case” and “respecting the legal procedure”.
This is the first criminal conviction against a child of a sitting US president.
Scourge of Weapons
Before finding his son, Joe Biden had once again called for “a ban on assault rifles, weapons of war” and denounced “the immunity of gunsmiths”, in a speech in Washington against the proliferation of firearms .
A scourge in the United States.
Found guilty by a jury of lying and illegally possessing a revolver in 2018, Hunter Biden walked out of the courthouse smiling and holding the hands of his mother-in-law Jill Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden.
He declared himself in a press release “more grateful (…) than disappointed”.
He theoretically faces up to 25 years in prison but an alternative sentence could also be decided.
This former lawyer and businessman, converted into a painter, has appeared since June 3 for having lied about his drug consumption when purchasing a Colt Cobra in a gun store on October 12, 2018.
In front of the press, special prosecutor David Weiss, who investigated the case, denounced “the illegal choices that the defendant made while he was in the grip of addictions”. He “knew he was a crack user or addict,” another prosecutor, Leo Wise, insisted at the trial.
For his lawyer Abbe Lowell, on the contrary, Hunter Biden “no longer used drugs” when he acquired the weapon that he “never, ever (…) used during the 11 days it was in his possession “.
“The crimes of the Biden family”
The Republican Party, under the orders of Donald Trump, has long sought to tarnish Joe Biden through his son’s setbacks, to the point of opening an impeachment investigation into the head of state. In question, Hunter’s businesses in Ukraine and China.
So far, no compromising evidence has been provided.
“The reign of corrupt Joe Biden over the Biden criminal family empire is coming to an end on November 5,” threatened the campaign team of the billionaire, who has just been found guilty of fraud and hidden payments to a star of X-rated films, during a resounding trial in New York.
Unheard of for a former president of the United States.
But for University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias, the verdict against son Biden “will have even less effect on President Biden’s campaign” than “the small impact that the verdict against Trump had on his 2024 campaign.”
Hunter Biden’s trial focused on his drug and alcohol addictions: the prosecution went so far as to show a photo taken by a former girlfriend showing him shirtless in his bath, a pipe crack protruding from his hand.
Prosecutors played audio excerpts from his autobiography (Beautiful Things) where he says he never recovered from the death in 2015 of his brother Beau Biden from brain cancer, at age 46.
As children in 1972, the two brothers survived a car accident that killed their mother and sister.
Hunter Biden also describes in his book his descent into hell, his wanderings in search of drugs around seedy convenience stores and his failures to detox from 2015 to 2019.
In 2018, he was having a romantic affair with Beau’s widow, Hallie Biden. She was the one who discovered the gun and threw it in the trash. She, along with Hunter Biden’s first wife and former girlfriend from 2018, have all confirmed his addictions.