Hunter Biden, the 54-year-old son of President Joe Biden, was found guilty of three federal felonies on Tuesday morning, June 11. He had been charged with lying about his drug use on a federal gun background check form. As so often happens in criminal prosecutions, the defendant's words proved his undoing. Hunter Biden wrote a memoir called "Beautiful Things" in 2021, detailing his drug-addled life at the time he purchased the revolver in October of 2018. Department of Justice special counsel David C. Weiss, a Trump appointee, brought the prosecution.
Biden almost pled guilty in July of 2023. That arrangement fell through when the federal judge overseeing the case, Judge Maryellen Noreika, declined to accept the deal. It appeared that prosecutors tried to arrange things so that a future Trump administration DOJ would have no oversight over Biden - challenging the separation of powers. The younger Biden incriminated himself, between the book and text messages written and sent by him. The White House has not addressed the conviction yet.
