Hunter Biden, son of US President Joe Biden, will take the stand in early June to stand trial for the purchase and possession of a gun.
The Delaware federal judge in charge of the case, Maryellen Noreika, has scheduled the jury trial for the weeks of June 3 and 10 for which he must answer to three charges that carry maximum sentences of up to 25 years in prison, although it is not usual for such caliber to be imposed in a case like this.
In parallel, the president's son has rejected an invitation from the House of Representatives to appear again next week in a committee, this time publicly, alleging that what the Republicans are looking for is a "circus act."
Joe Biden's son is charged with three crimes in Delaware and is charged with nine other counts of tax crimes in California.
In the case of weapons, according to the prosecutor, he lied when he assured that he was clean of drugs when he bought a 38-caliber Colt Cobra in 2018. The charge sheet maintains that Hunter Biden presented a written statement “in which he certified that he was not illicit user or addict of any stimulant, narcotic or any other controlled substance, when in reality, as he knew, said statement was false and fictitious.”
Special prosecutor David Weiss accuses him of two crimes for these alleged falsehoods (one for the alleged false information on the form and another for lying to the seller of the weapon) and a third for the subsequent possession of the weapon, which would also be illegal due to his addictions. .
Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty at a hearing last October.
A few months ago, the accused admitted the facts as part of an agreement by which the prosecutor renounced criminal prosecution of the crime in exchange for him staying away from drugs for two years and giving up having a firearm in the home. future.
It is a common agreement in similar cases in which the accused have been rehabilitated and have no criminal record.
The agreement to file the gun case also admitted the commission of two crimes of tax fraud in 2017 and 2018 (already regularized with the payment of one million dollars) for which he was going to be sentenced to lesser penalties, predictably avoiding entry in prison.
The different interpretation of the agreement between the prosecution and the defense and the pressure from the Republicans, who saw in the pact a favorable treatment for the president's son, completely changed the situation.
The prosecutor finally decided to file charges for the purchase and possession of the weapon in Delaware and for the alleged tax crimes in California.
Much of the long investigation against Hunter Biden focused on the accusations of a confidant of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Alexander Smirnov, 43, who has finally been accused of false testimony and fabricating evidence for political reasons. .
Smirnov accused both Hunter Biden and Joe Biden of receiving five million each in bribes from Ukraine.
Although this accusation has been discredited, Republicans in the House of Representatives continue their harassment of Hunter Biden as a way of attacking the president within an investigation for a possible impeachment
of
the president.
Although there is no strong indication, Republicans are keeping their investigation open.
In that context, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, James Comer, announced last week that he had invited him and several of his associates to a public hearing in Congress.
Initially, Hunter Biden requested to appear in public, but Republicans preferred to question him behind closed doors.
That interrogation did not give the results they expected, since at no time were the Republicans able to corner Hunter Biden or find anything in his testimony that implicated the president in any way in his business.
Now, Hunter Biden has rejected the invitation through a letter sent to Congress by his lawyer, Abbe Lowell.
On the one hand, he points out that the date set for the session, March 20, conflicts with a Los Angeles court hearing that he has to attend the next day.
“However, the scheduling conflict is the least of the problems.
His brazen act planned for the media is not proper procedure, but rather an obvious attempt to score a goal in desperation after the match has ended.”
“Their latest step — this March 6 invitation — is not a serious supervisory procedure.
“It is his attempt to resurrect his group's moribund investigation with a circus act made for the right-wing media,” the letter adds.
Comer has reacted with a statement in which he says: “Hunter Biden declared for months that he wanted a public hearing, but now that he has been offered one along with his business partners with whom he worked for years, he refuses to come.”
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