Federal prosecutors will seek an indictment of Hunter Biden for illegally possessing a gun as a drug user by Sept. 29, according to a new court filing on Wednesday.
Biden is expected to be charged in Delaware with felony counts related to his purchase of a gun in October of 2018. At the time, he has said he was regularly using crack cocaine. Prosecutors said last month that they also plan to charge the president’s son with tax crimes in California or Washington, D.C.
The charges stem from a lengthy federal investigation into the president’s son. This summer, he nearly reached a deal with prosecutors that would have allowed him to plead guilty to two misdemeanor counts of failing to pay federal taxes. The deal also would have allowed him to avoid prosecution on gun charges if he stayed out of trouble for several years.
But after a judge questioned the deal at a dramatic hearing on July 26, it collapsed. Then, on Aug. 11, Attorney General Merrick Garland granted “special counsel” status to David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who has been overseeing the investigation for years.
Wednesday’s filing is the latest sign that his team is plowing ahead with an extraordinarily sensitive and historically unprecedented investigation — a criminal case that pits prosecutors in the executive branch against the president’s son.
Garland and Weiss have long maintained that the investigation is independent. But IRS agents who worked on the case have testified to Congress that they believe they faced political interference while investigating the president’s son. Congressional Republicans have similarly blasted the case as tainted by politics.
House Republicans have accused Weiss of offering Hunter Biden a sweetheart deal, and they are scrutinizing his foreign business dealings, including in China and Ukraine. They have also lambasted the feds for deciding against stiffer charges for the alleged tax crimes. And they are preparing to launch an impeachment inquiry against the president because of his son’s foreign business.
— Betsy Woodruff Swan in Prosecutors plan to seek indictment of Hunter Biden on gun charges this month
