(Wilmington) Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted Tuesday by a federal criminal court of illegal possession of a firearm in 2018, amid drug addiction, in the midst of the President of the United States’ campaign for his re-election.
The 81-year-old Democratic leader, who is preparing to face his Republican rival Donald Trump on November 5, immediately reiterated in a statement that he “would accept the conclusion of this matter” and that he would “respect the legal process.”
“I’m the president, but I’m also a father. (First lady) Jill (Biden) and I love our son and are so proud of the man he is today,” wrote the president, who had already shown him at the start of the trial his “infinite love » while committing not to pardon him if he was convicted.
This verdict from the jury at the Wilmington court in Delaware (east) comes on the day Joe Biden is due to give a speech on limiting the proliferation of firearms, a scourge in the United States.
Hunter Biden walked out of the courthouse smiling and holding hands with his mother-in-law Jill Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden.
He theoretically faces up to 25 years in prison, but an alternative sentence could also be decided.
After two weeks of debates, often in the presence of Jill Biden, the 12 jurors answered “yes” to three counts: two on lies in the documents necessary for the purchase of a revolver in October 2018 and a third on his illegal detention.
He “knew he was a crack user or (that he was) addicted,” prosecutor Leo Wise insisted.
Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, had instead assured jurors that “he was no longer using drugs” when he purchased the weapon, which “was never, ever loaded, carried or used during the 11 days it was in his possession.”
The Republican Party, under the orders of Donald Trump, has long sought to tarnish Joe Biden through his son’s setbacks, going so far as to open an impeachment investigation into the head of state. At issue: Hunter’s business in Ukraine and China.
So far, no compromising evidence has been provided.
The Republican chairman of a House of Representatives investigative committee, James Comer, welcomed in a statement Tuesday “a step toward accountability, but (that must go) until the Department of Justice investigates all those involved around […] Biden’s corrupting influence.”
Hunter Biden is also due to appear in court in California in September on tax evasion charges.
His affairs, which are the focus of conservative media, risk parasitizing his father’s attempts to mark the contrast with Donald Trump, found guilty on May 30 in a criminal trial for hidden payments to a porn star, a historic first against a former president of the United States.
Hunter Biden’s trial revived memories of his 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 his hand.
At trial, prosecutors used excerpts from Hunter Biden’s autobiography, “Beautiful Things.” He says he never recovered from 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.
He describes his descent into hell, his wanderings in search of drugs around seedy convenience stores and his failed attempts at detoxification from 2015 to 2019.
She, along with Hunter Biden’s first wife and an ex-girlfriend he dated in 2018 all confirmed at trial his drug problems.
