Special Counsel Plans To Charge Hunter Biden With Felony Gun Crimes Later This Month

According to a federal court filing the charges are expected by September 29.

Suchat Pederson/the News Journal via AP, file
The U.S. attorney for Delaware, David Weiss, during a press conference on May 3, 2018, at his district office at Wilmington. Suchat Pederson/the News Journal via AP, file

Special Counsel David Weiss said Wednesday that he intends to bring gun-related charges against the president’s son, Hunter Biden, according to a court filing.

The younger Mr. Biden had, earlier this summer, reached a plea deal that would have allowed him to enter a “judicial diversion program” and avoid felony charges concerning his possession of a firearm while using drugs. Mr Biden would have had to stay sober and abide by other restrictions for a few years in order for the charges to be dropped. 

That deal, however, fell apart in July under scrutiny from a federal judge in Delaware, Maryellen Noreika. Now, Mr. Weiss, who was subsequently elevated to special counsel by Attorney General Garland, is planning to indict the president’s son on the gun charges within a few weeks.

“The Speedy Trial Act requires that the Government obtain the return of an indictment by a grand jury by Friday, September 29, 2023, at the earliest,” Mr. Weiss’s office wrote in a filing. “The Government intends to seek the return of an indictment in this case before that date.”

Mr. Biden’s lawyers have not yet responded to the filing, but they’d previously said they had hoped to negotiate a new plea agreement with Mr. Weiss.

The move may not be sufficient to quell objections from GOP lawmakers who’ve accused Mr. Weiss of being appointed to protect Hunter Biden. Some Republican lawmakers on the House Oversight and Judiciary Committees have spent much of their time pursuing investigations into the younger Mr. Biden’s business dealings.

“Let’s be clear what today’s move is really about,” Congressman James Comer said when Mr. Weiss was elevated to special counsel. “The Biden Justice Department is trying to stonewall Congressional oversight.”

Mr. Weiss was initially appointed by President Trump to serve as the federal prosecutor for the District of Delaware, and though Republicans called for him to be made special counsel for years, they soured on the notion once it happened.

“This action by Biden’s DOJ cannot be used to obstruct congressional investigations or whitewash the Biden family corruption,” Speaker McCarthy said of the appointment.

Mr. Biden faces a felony gun charge relating to his purchase of a handgun in Delaware in 2018, at the height of his addiction to crack cocaine, a drug he first used at age 18. 

Hunter Biden’s gun came to the attention of law enforcement a few days after he bought it, Politico reported, when the widow of his late brother Beau and girlfriend at the time, Hallie Biden, found the gun in his pickup truck and threw it out in a garbage can behind a Wilmington, Delaware grocery store.

Mr. Biden has acknowledged struggling with drug use for years but says he is now sober. The initial plea deal that collapsed incorporated both the gun possession charge and charges related to unpaid taxes.


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