Everyone knew Joe’s son had some substance abuse problems in the past. But it looks like they aren’t over for Hunter.
And Hunter Biden was caught in a bombshell drug bust.
On Tuesday, federal prosecutors urged a judge to reject Hunter Biden’s efforts to have the gun charges against him dismissed, stating that investigators discovered cocaine residue on the pouch the president’s son used to carry his gun last year.
Prosecutors pushed for the case against President Joe Biden’s son to proceed, saying “the strength of the evidence against him is overwhelming” and rejecting Hunter Biden’s assertions that he is being singled out for political reasons.
In addition to “incriminating statements” Hunter Biden made about his drug usage in his 2021 memoir, detectives discovered a white powdery substance on the brown leather pouch he used to store the revolver after retrieving it from the state police vault last year, prosecutors said. According to reports, an FBI chemist identified the substance as cocaine.
“To be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun,” prosecutors said.
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to charges alleging he lied about his drug use on a document to purchase a rifle in October 2018 which he kept for roughly 11 days.
He admitted to dealing with a crack cocaine addiction during that time period in 2018, but his lawyers claim he did not break the law.
Hunter Biden has subsequently stated that he has stopped using drugs and is working to turn his life around.
His attorneys did not immediately respond to demands for comment on the prosecutors’ petition on Tuesday.
These criminal procedures could have been averted with a plea deal last year, but an agreement with federal prosecutors fell through, and now the president’s son will face a trial this year as his father campaigns.
He was indicted after the plea deal fell through when the judge who was meant to sign off on it instead voiced a number of concerns about it.
He had initially agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax charges and would not have faced prosecution for the weapons allegations if he had been out of trouble for two years.
Federal prosecutors had been investigating the president’s son’s business practices for years, and this was the end result.
His lawyers have asked the judge to dismiss the gun case, claiming that he was “selectively charged” for improper political reasons. They have maintained that special counsel David Weiss, who also serves as the United States Attorney for Delaware and was appointed by former President Donald Trump, “buckled under political pressure” to file more serious charges in response to Trump and other Republicans’ criticism of the agreement.
Prosecutors, on the other hand, asserted that “to support his allegation that the Executive Branch, led by his father, President Biden, and its Justice Department, led by the Attorney General appointed by his father, authorized prosecution by the U.S. Attorney and Special Counsel of their choosing for a ‘improper political purpose.'”
“The charges in this case are not trumped up or because of former President Trump – they are instead a result of the defendant’s own choices and were brought in spite of, not because of, any outside noise made by politicians,” the attorney general’s office said.
Hunter Biden’s criminal proceedings are taking place with House Republicans’ so-far fruitless efforts to link his financial transactions to his father.
Republicans are launching an impeachment investigation against President Biden, alleging he participated in an influence-peddling conspiracy with his son.
House Republicans, however, postponed efforts to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for violating a congressional subpoena in their ongoing inquiry on Tuesday, citing conversations with his attorneys that could resolve the standoff.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
