CNN
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Hunter Biden is scheduled to go on trial Monday on felony gun charges in a landmark case that could impact President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign.
It is the first time in US history that the child of a sitting president has been put on trial. The indictment was filed by the Department of Justice, specifically by special counsel David Weiss, who was appointed last year to oversee the Hunter Biden investigation.
Hunter Biden, 54, is charged with federal offenses including illegally purchasing and possessing a firearm while abusing or addicted to drugs. He has pleaded not guilty to three charges but has spoken openly about his struggles with alcohol and crack cocaine addiction.
The trial, which could last one to two weeks, will take place in Wilmington, Delaware.
The first two of the three indictments relate to the gun purchase itself.
When you buy a gun, you have to fill out a form with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to confirm that your purchase is legal, and Hunter Biden is accused of lying on that form.
Those questions included: have you ever been convicted of a felony? Are you a fugitive? Are you in the country illegally? And, crucial to this case, are you an “unlawful user or addict” of illegal drugs? Hunter Biden allegedly checked the box marked “no.”
The third charge is for gun possession. It is a federal law to possess a firearm if you are abusing drugs. According to the indictment and documents recently unsealed in court documents, Hunter Biden possessed the gun for 11 days in October 2018, but his girlfriend threw it in the trash out of concern for his mental health.
“Guns are dangerous in the wrong hands and that’s the driving force behind this law,” Nabeel Kibria, a Washington, DC-based lawyer who has handled hundreds of gun-related cases, told CNN. “The evidence seems to be heavily weighted against hunters, but who decides who is an addict? What are the clear rules that must be followed?”
Prosecutors have said they plan to call about a dozen witnesses in the case.
Most notably, the indictment sought testimony from three of Hunter Biden’s former girlfriends about their drug use around the time they bought the guns, including his ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, his late brother’s widow Hallie Biden, who later dated Hunter Biden, and the mother of his children, Lunden Roberts.
Their testimony could bring to life what Hunter Biden described as “rock bottom,” a period when he was using drugs or trying to get drugs almost constantly. During his plea hearing last year, Hunter Biden testified that he had been sober since May 2019.
“He’s going to experience stress and shame in court,” says Valerie Earnshaw, a professor of social psychology at the University of Delaware who studies the stigma surrounding addiction. “Depending on his own recovery process, there may be days when he feels a lot of shame. Shame is a corrosive, harmful emotion. It doesn’t promote healthy behavior.”
Hunter Biden’s defense team has said it may call experts who can explain to jurors how addicts understand their struggles. His team also includes a forensic chemist who could testify about a white residue found on a gun pouch that prosecutors say tested positive for cocaine when analyzed by the FBI in 2023.
The lawsuit was filed by Weiss, a former federal prosecutor in Delaware appointed by President Donald Trump after Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated him to special counsel last year after the spectacular failure of a proposed plea deal with Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers argued that Weiss sought the indictment because she was bowing to relentless pressure from Republican lawmakers and the former president — a theory Weiss slammed as “a fabrication made for a Hollywood script,” and the judge in the gun case concluded the argument was “factually nonsensical.”
But many Republicans have criticized Weiss, arguing that she offered Hunter Biden a “sweet deal” last year that would have resolved the gun issue and ended the tax investigation if he pleaded only to misdemeanor charges. (Legal experts told CNN at the time that the proposed deal was reasonable.)
The case is being handled by U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika, a former patent attorney who was nominated by Trump with the support of Delaware’s two Democratic senators. The Senate confirmed her nomination by a unanimous oral vote in 2018.
She oversaw a dramatic hearing last summer in which both sides asked her to approve a plea deal. But she hesitated, and under tough questioning revealed significant differences between the parties over the scope of the deal. The hearing ended without a resolution, and plea-bargain talks subsequently fell apart. That’s when Garland appointed Weiss as special counsel.
Noreika’s forthright approach has helped the trial move steadily forward: She has rejected Hunter Biden’s attempts to dismiss the case or obstruct prosecutors’ investigation, but has sided with Biden on some key evidentiary issues.
If convicted on all three charges, the president’s son could face up to 25 years in prison.
But he has no criminal record, and first-time offenders often receive much lighter sentences than the maximum. His punishment is up to Noreika.
Because these are federal charges, President Joe Biden has the power to pardon his son at any time. If his son is convicted, the president can also commute his sentence and waive any penalties imposed.
The White House has explicitly ruled out a pardon, but the political calculations could change after the November election.
This is a historic moment for America and in presidential history: No president has ever tried to run a country while watching his own child stand trial.
There have been plenty of examples of presidential families getting into trouble over the past few decades — George H.W. Bush’s son faced civil penalties for violating banking laws while his father was in the White House, and Jimmy Carter’s brother was heavily scrutinized for foreign lobbying activities — but no cases have led to criminal trials.
CNN presidential historian Douglas Brinkley said “there is always going to be someone in the presidential family who is considered a black sheep,” but said Hunter Biden’s far-reaching legal troubles “are unusually close to home because he’s the president’s son.”
“This trial is a heavy burden for President Biden and it weighs very heavily on his psyche,” Brinkley said. “It’s difficult for any parent to watch their child struggle with addiction and face the possibility of prison. You want his family to be a safe haven for him, but in this case, his family is probably his biggest concern at this point.”
The family ties have also created some interesting differences between father and son.
Another legal battle is over the constitutionality of a law that makes it illegal for drug users to own guns. The Biden administration has defended the law and hopes the Supreme Court will consider the case. But Hunter Biden’s team argued that the law violates the Second Amendment, and lost.
The judge said about 250 Delaware residents have been called to serve on the jury, which will be narrowed down to 12 full jurors and four alternates.
Delaware is one of the smallest states in the US, and the Biden family has a big presence there.
As part of the jury selection process (called a voir dire), potential jurors will be asked whether they can remain impartial regardless of their views on the 2024 election, whether they can remain unbiased about Hunter Biden, and whether Joe Biden, who has held public office in Delaware since 1971, was eligible to vote in past elections.
Other questions touched on the highly politicized atmosphere surrounding the case, such as, “Do you believe Hunter Biden is being charged in this case because his father is the president of the United States?” or, taking the opposite position, whether he believes “he is not being charged with other crimes because his father is the president.”
Hunter Biden hasn’t said much about his case since he was indicted last year.
He spoke out in December as he battled House Republicans investigating his business dealings, accepting responsibility for “making mistakes in my life and squandering the opportunities and privileges I’ve been given.” But he blasted MAGA-right lawmakers who “mockeryed about my struggle with addiction” and “belittled my recovery.”
“They tried to dehumanize me, all to embarrass and hurt my father,” he said.
Hunter Biden previously shared deeply personal details about his addiction in his 2021 memoir, which prosecutors plan to use against him at trial. He described his time in rehab, his relapse, how he bought drugs near the White House and a time when he had “no plan other than the moment-to-moment demands of a crack pipe.”
Laptop, text, email
One of the most notable pieces of evidence in the trial will likely be messages from Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop, which has been at the center of a long-running political debate. Weiss said the materials are “real” and will be a key part of the trial, refuting previous claims by the president’s son that the laptop may be fake or Russian disinformation.
Republicans and right-wing media have used the embarrassing emails and sexually explicit images from the laptop to attack Hunter Biden, while Biden’s lawyers claim the files were manipulated and are suing the repair shop owner who helped release the materials.
Many on the right applauded Weiss’s move, even though she didn’t back up their loftier anti-Biden claims. The conservative tabloid New York Post, which first published the laptop message in 2020, recently celebrated the win in a cover story.
In her ruling last month, Judge Noreika said she would allow Hunter Biden to contest the veracity of messages presented at trial. Some of the messages include heartbreaking arguments between Hunter Biden and his loved ones about his sobriety. Others show him meeting with drug dealers, including just a few blocks from the Wilmington federal courthouse.
“I am a liar, thief, blamer, drug addict, delusional addict, an addict unlike any other you’ve ever known, who has ruined every relationship I’ve ever cared about,” he texted Hallie Biden in October 2018, according to Weiss’ filing.
Prosecutors plan to use the laptop to specifically support their claim that Hunter was using illegal drugs when he bought the gun in 2018. Weiss did not address Republicans’ unproven assertions that emails sent from the laptop prove Hunter and his father were involved in overseas illicit trafficking, and that is not what this case is about.
This is just one of two trials Hunter Biden faces this year.
The second trial, scheduled for September in Los Angeles, centers on Hunter Biden’s financial woes. Biden has pleaded not guilty to tax evasion, filing false tax returns and failing to file taxes on a timely basis.
Both trials were originally scheduled for June, but Hunter Biden agreed to a delay after a federal judge in California ordered them to be postponed, but the September trial date means the trial will coincide with the final stretch of the presidential campaign.
CNN’s Holmes Lybrand contributed to this report.
