The political life of US President Joe Bidengo on getting complicated by his son Hunter. Two days after the Republicans in control of the Lower House of Congress began an investigation to impeach the president, federal prosecutors this Thursday charged the Delaware scion with three criminal charges related to his purchase and possession of weapons while using narcotics.
TO end of June Hunter Biden had reached an agreement with the Department of Justice by which, in addition to being released on parole without going to jail by accepting plead guilty to minor tax crimes, He avoided prosecution for the weapons issue. That agreement, however, collapse in July after being questioned by a judge, and Biden He finally pleaded “not guilty.”
In mid-August, the Attorney General of the United States, Merrick Garland, elevated David Weiss, who was already the lead prosecutor in the Hunter Biden case, to the rank of special prosecutor. And Weiss, who was appointed by Donald Trumphas taken the unprecedented step this Thursday, with the indictment with three charges for weapons (not for tax crimes, although these could be filed at any time, possibly in California or Washington).
Specifically, Hunter Biden faces for now two charges for having lied about his drug use and addiction In the official purchase documentation for a Colt Cobra pistol in 2018, a federal document. The third charge accuses him of having been in illegal possession of a weapon while using narcotics, since he had the gun 11 days from its purchase at a time when he was using drugs (it was crack addict).
His lawyers have argued that these charges are usually not filed when it is a first offense, and when the weapon is not associated with other crimes. In any case they have arrived. And the maximum penalty What Biden could receive if he were convicted of the three crimes is 25 years in prison.
The accusation is historic because the son of a president has never been charged. It may mean that Hunter Biden has to undergo a trial next yearas his father delivers the electoral race towards November 2024, when he seeks to be re-elected president. The Democrat’s main rival in the Republican field right now is former president Donald Trump, currently facing charges in four cases. Two are federal, for the assault on the Capitol and for the handling of classified documents and obstruction of that investigation and two other state ones: in Georgia for trying to reverse the legal results of 2020 in the state and in New York for payments to silence Stormy Daniels.
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Biden’s indictment also comes as Republicans in the Lower House have stepped on the throttle trying impeach President Biden. On Tuesday the president of that House, Kevin McCarthy announced the opening of the investigations, which focus on whether the president and his family benefited from what, they claim, were corrupt activities of Hunter Biden andn abroad.
Since 2018, the Department of Justice had investigated Hunter’s participation in the Board of Directors of Burismaa Ukrainian energy company, which partly coincided with the his father’s vice presidencyand what Trump asked kyiv to investigate in the call that led the Republican to his first impeachment). They were also under the magnifying glass agreements of business he had done in China that earned him millions of dollars in income and ties with oligarchs. No charges have been filed, however, for these issues, and at least for now it has not been publicly demonstrated with evidence that Biden was linked to his son’s actions or benefited from them.