A court decided on Wednesday to provisionally set June 3 as the trial date for Hunter Biden’s three federal firearms charges.
After a status conference attended by special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s attorneys, Judge Maryellen Noreika set the trial date.
In September, a federal grand jury in Delaware accused Hunter Biden on three criminal counts connected to a gun he purchased in 2018 while battling a heroin addiction.
During the purchase of the handgun, Hunter Biden is accused of making false claims regarding his drug use, which is connected to two of the felony gun charges. A further accusation has been filed against Hunter Biden, alleging that he had the pistol for eleven days while he was addicted to drugs. For these serious crimes, the maximum jail term is twenty-five years. Hunter Biden recently penned an opinion piece for USA Today in which he accused his opponents of taking advantage of his battle with substance abuse.
Beautiful Things, Hunter Biden’s book, explores his struggles with substance abuse and alcoholism. In response to Hunter Biden’s attempts to get the gun charges dismissed, Weiss and his team of prosecutors have brought attention to certain distasteful parts of the memoir in their court papers. There is evidence of Biden’s drug use and images of his lavish lifestyle stored on his long-lost laptop and Apple iCloud server.
Hunter Biden’s legal team asserts that their client is immune from prosecution because of a pretrial diversion deal they struck with the US Department of Justice for a single felony firearms charge. A dispute between Hunter Biden’s attorneys and the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s office over an immunity clause in the pretrial diversion arrangement led to the dissolution of the agreement and the guilty plea deal for two tax offenses in July.
Joe Biden, the current president, is running for reelection against Donald Trump, the projected Republican candidate, and the gun trial is likely to influence his campaign significantly.
Hunter Biden is also facing nine federal tax charges in California.