Hunter Biden will likely be sentenced in his gun case in Delaware on November 13, eight days after the 2024 presidential election. Federal Judge said Friday.
Hunter Biden, the one surviving son of President Joe Biden, was found guilty in June by a jury in U.S. District Court in Wilmington on three counts related to the acquisition and possession of a revolver while using illegal drugs.
The 54-year-old is the primary child of a sitting US president to ever be convicted of criminal offenses.
Hunter Biden faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, but on account of federal sentencing guidelines, he’ll likely receive a much lighter sentence from Judge Maryellen Noreika.
Hunter Biden faces one other criminal trial in federal court in Los Angeles in September. He is charged with nine counts of allegedly failing to pay no less than $1.4 million in taxes over several years.
On July 18, his lawyers asked the judges in each the Delaware and LA cases to dismiss the costs.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers cited a recent opinion of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioning whether the Justice Department has the authority to appoint special counsel as prosecutors and the related dismissal of the case against former President Donald Trump related to using secret criminal documents in a federal court in Florida.
Attorney General Merrick Garlandthe top of the Justice Department, appointed U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss as special counsel in August 2023 to guide the investigation into Hunter Biden and prosecute him if essential.
Garland had also appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to analyze Trump over his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House and his efforts to overturn his election defeat to President Biden in 2020.
Smith secured grand jury indictments against Trump in each cases and is appealing a Florida federal judge's decision to dismiss the classified documents case last month. The judge, Aileen Cannon, had declared Smith's appointment as special counsel unconstitutional, citing Thomas' recent opinion in her ruling.
Hunter Biden's legal troubles and unsavory past attracted considerable attention when his father ran for re-election against Trump, who had appointed Noreika and Cannon as judges.
President Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, undermining his son's usefulness as a political weapon for Republicans.
The president endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor against Trump on the identical day that Trump dropped out of the campaign.
On Friday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said Harris had won enough delegate votes to secure the party's nomination, although the end result was not yet official. The official announcement of the outcomes is scheduled for Monday.
Trump became the primary former president to be convicted of a criminal offense this spring. He is awaiting sentencing in a case wherein a New York state court jury found him guilty of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
In addition to the criminal election interference case in Washington, DC, Trump is facing separate charges in state court in Atlanta related to his try to overturn his loss to President Biden in Georgia within the 2020 election.
image credit : www.cnbc.com