Photo: Ryan Collerd Agence France-Presse Hunter Biden, a 54-year-old lawyer and businessman turned artist, appeared in Wilmington for lying about his drug use when he bought a revolver in a gun store in 2018.
Ryan Collerd – Agence France-Presse and Nicolas Revise – Agence France-Presse in Wilmington and New York
Published at 11:30 a.m. Updated at 1:56 p.m.
- United States
Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, was convicted Tuesday in federal criminal court of illegal possession of a firearm in 2018, amid drug addiction, in the midst of the president's campaign of the United States for his re-election.
The 81-year-old Democratic leader, who is preparing to face his Republican rival Donald Trump on November 5, immediately reiterated in a press release that he “would accept the conclusion of this matter” and that he would “respect the legal procedure”.
This is the first criminal conviction against a child of a sitting US president.
“I am the president but I am also a father. (The First Lady) Jill (Biden) and I love our son and are so proud of the man he is today,” wrote the president, who had already shown him at the start of the trial his “infinite love » while committing not to pardon him if he were convicted.
This verdict of the jury of the court of Wilmington in Delaware (east) occurs the day Joe Biden is scheduled to deliver a speech on curbing the proliferation of guns, a scourge in the United States.
Hunter Biden walked out of the courthouse smiling and holding the hand of his mother-in-law Jill Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden.
He theoretically faces up to 25 years in prison but an alternative sentence could also be decided.
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Three times “yes”
After two weeks of debates, often in the presence of Jill Biden, the 12 jurors answered “yes” to three counts: two on lies in the documents necessary for the purchase of a revolver in October 2018 and a third on its illegal possession.
< p>Hunter Biden, a 54-year-old lawyer and businessman turned artist, has been appearing since June 3 in this stronghold of the Biden clan for having lied about his drug use when he bought a Colt Cobra type revolver in a gun store. .
He “knew that he was a crack user or [that he was] addicted,” prosecutor Leo Wise insisted.
Biden's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, on the contrary assured the jurors that “he was no longer using drugs” when he purchased the weapon, which “never, ever been loaded, carried or used during the 11 days it was in his possession.”
“Biden’s Corrupting Influence”< /h2>
The Republican Party, under the orders of Donald Trump, has long sought to tarnish Joe Biden through his son's setbacks, going so far as to open an impeachment investigation into the head of state. At issue: Hunter's affairs in Ukraine and China.
So far, no incriminating evidence has been provided.
The Republican chairman of an investigative committee of the House of Representatives, James Comer, welcomed Tuesday in a press release “a step towards accountability but [which must go] until the Department of Justice is investigating all those involved in […] Biden's corrupting influence.”
Hunter Biden is also scheduled to appear in California in September on tax fraud charges.
His affairs, which are the focus of conservative media, risk parasitizing his father's attempts to mark the contrast with Donald Trump, convicted on May 30 in a criminal trial for hidden payments to an X-rated movie star, a historic first against a former president of the United States.
The trial of Hunter Biden revived the memory of his addictions to which the prosecution returned in detail, to the point of showing a photo taken by an ex-girlfriend showing him shirtless in the bath, a crack pipe protruding from his hand.
Descent to the hells
At trial, prosecutors used excerpts from Hunter Biden's autobiography, The Beautiful Things. He says he never recovered from the death in 2015 of his brother Beau Biden from brain cancer at age 46. The two brothers survived a car accident in 1972 that killed their mother and little sister.
He describes his descent into hell, his wanderings in search of drugs around seedy convenience stores and his failed attempts at detoxification from 2015 to 2019.
In 2018, he was experiencing a sentimental story with his brother's widow, Hallie Biden. She was the one who discovered the gun and threw it in the trash.
She, as well as Hunter Biden's first wife and an ex-girlfriend who he was dating in 2018 all confirmed at trial his drug problems.