Hunter Biden, the son of current US President Joe Biden, was convicted on Tuesday June 11 of illegal possession of a firearm, a possession which would be illegal because he was a drug user.
A verdict which will not facilitate his father’s presidential campaign. After two weeks of debates, Hunter Biden, the son of American President Joe Biden, was found guilty this Tuesday, June 11, of illegal possession of a firearm in 2018, against a backdrop of drug addiction. This is the first criminal conviction against a child of a sitting president.
The 12-person jury at the court in Wilmington, the Biden stronghold in the eastern US state of Delaware, answered yes to all three counts: two on lies in the documents necessary for the purchase of a revolver in October 2018 and a third on its illegal possession. The youngest Biden, who is 54 years old, theoretically faces up to 25 years behind bars, but an alternative sentence to prison could also be decided.
A boon for Trump
The verdict comes at the worst time. It comes on the day Joe Biden is due to give a speech on limiting the proliferation of firearms, a scourge in the United States.
In addition to this bad timing, this trial was a godsend for the Republican Party, under the orders of Donald Trump, who seeks at all costs to tarnish Joe Biden through his son’s setbacks, to the point of opening an impeachment investigation into the head of the state.
Republicans particularly criticize Hunter Biden for questionable deals in Ukraine and China. So far, no compromising evidence against Hunter Biden has been provided. Hunter Biden is also scheduled to appear in California in September on tax fraud charges.
His affairs, which are also the focus of conservative media like Fox News, risk parasitizing his father’s attempts to mark the contrast with Donald Trump, convicted on May 30 in a criminal trial for hidden payments to an X-rated movie star, a first in history for a former president of the United States.
Joe Biden will not pardon his son
Less than five months before the November 5 election, the Biden couple, however, showed their support for Hunter, like Jill Biden kissing him in the courtroom and Joe Biden who expressed his support to him. “endless Love”. But the president has pledged not to grant a pardon if he is convicted.
The tenant also announced Tuesday in a press release that he “would accept the outcome” of the trial against his son Hunter and that he “would continue to respect the legal process.” “Jill (Biden, the First Lady) and I will always be there for Hunter (…). That will never change”again assured the American president, repeating that he “loved” his son and that he was “proud” from him.
The trial also revived the memory of Hunter Biden’s addictions, to which the prosecution returned in detail, going so far as to show a photo taken by an ex-girlfriend showing him shirtless in his bath, a crack pipe protruding from her hand.
Prosecutors also used excerpts from his autobiography Beautiful Things. Hunter Biden says he never got over the death in 2015 of his brother Beau Biden from brain cancer at age 46. The two brothers survived a car accident in 1972 that killed their mother and little sister. Then he describes his descent into hell, his wanderings in search of drugs around seedy convenience stores, and his failed attempts at detoxification, between the years 2015 and 2019. A family story that Joe Biden would have preferred to keep secret.
