Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, was convicted Tuesday on three counts related to lying about his drug use to purchase a firearm, marking the first time a sitting president’s child has been convicted of a crime.
A federal jury of six men and six women deliberated for three hours over two days before delivering the verdict.
The jury found Biden, 54, guilty of making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed firearms dealer, and possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of or addict to a controlled substance.
Biden showed no visible reaction as the verdict was read. His wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, and attorney, Kevin Morris, watched from the gallery.
First Lady Jill Biden, who had attended every day of the trial except one, missed reading the verdict by two minutes. After the verdict, Hunter Biden left the Wilmington federal courthouse holding hands with his wife.
He briefly touched his stepmother on the shoulder before getting into a black SUV with Secret Service agents, ignoring questions from reporters.
Prosecutors argued that Biden knowingly lied on a gun application form about his drug use when he purchased a Colt Cobra .38-caliber revolver on October 12, 2018. At the time, he was addicted to crack cocaine, a fact he admitted in his 2021 memoir “Beautiful Things,” which prosecutors used as evidence.
Despite facing up to 25 years in prison, Biden will likely receive a lighter sentence due to his lack of prior convictions. However, his legal troubles are not over; he is scheduled to face a separate trial in Los Angeles starting September 5 for allegedly evading $1.4 million in federal income tax from 2016 to 2019.
The prosecution used various forms of evidence, including witness testimony, Biden’s communications, data from his laptop, and excerpts from his memoir, to prove his drug use around the time he purchased the firearm.
Judge Maryellen Noreika ruled that prosecutors did not need to prove Biden was high on the specific day he bought the gun.
Jurors heard numerous excerpts from Biden’s audiobook describing his addiction struggles and saw messages indicating his drug use. Witnesses included his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, and Hallie Biden, his sister-in-law turned lover.
Buhle testified about discovering Biden’s crack use in 2015, the same year his brother Beau died, while Kestan described their relationship in 2018, during which Biden smoked crack frequently.
The defence argued that Biden was struggling with alcoholism rather than a relapse into drug use and questioned the credibility of the gun salesman.
Initially, Biden had pleaded not guilty to all charges, though he was set to take a guilty plea in June 2023 before the deal fell apart over a lack of immunity from future charges.
