Hunter Biden could face charges of illegally possessing a gun while he was using drugs following a bombshell court filing revealing prosecutors want to indict him by the end of September.
The president’s son had reached a deal that would have allowed him to avoid trial for the firearms charges if he abided by parole conditions over 24 months.
But now charges that could land him up to 10 years in prison appear to be back on the table, according to a new filing signed by Special Counsel David Weiss.
‘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,’ the filing read. ‘The Government intends to seek the return of an indictment in this case before that date.’
Hunter Biden is also under investigation for his foreign business dealings, which are also the focus of probes started by House Republicans in Congress.
He was supposed to be spared from jailtime when Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware, and his lawyers inked a plea deal where the younger Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor crimes of failure to pay more than $100,000 in taxes.
Hunter had made more than $1.5 million in income in 2017 and 2018. As part of the plea deal, he would avoid prosecution for the gun charge as long as he met certain conditions over a 24-month period.
Hunter had lied on a 2018 application to buy a gun. A photo of the form shows he answered ‘no’ when asked if he was an ‘unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.’
Hunter wrote about his extensive drug use during that period of his life in his 2021 memoir, Beautiful Things. Republicans in Washington complained that the president’s son had gotten himself a ‘sweetheart deal.’
But it all fell apart when he was in the Wilmington, Delaware courtroom of the Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika in late July.
Due to Noreika’s probing, daylight was discovered between the government and Hunter’s lawyers’ understanding of the plea deal and whether it provided blanket immunity – essentially whether it let the first son off the hook from facing any future federal charges. Noreika complained that the U.S. attorney’s office and Hunter’s lawyers had expected her to ‘rubber-stamp’ the deal.
