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 denies drug-use allegations in 2018 gun purchase case
Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to allegations of lying about his drug use on paperwork used to purchase a gun that he kept for roughly 11 days in October 2018. 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 react to inquiries about the prosecutors’ filing 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 have avoided prosecution for the weapons allegations if he had remained 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 alleged that special counsel David Weiss, who also serves as the U.S. attorney for Delaware and was initially appointed by former President Donald Trump, “buckled under political pressure” to bring more severe charges amid criticism of the deal from Trump and other Republicans.
Prosecutors dismiss Hunter Biden’s claim of politically motivated prosecution
Prosecutors, however, said there is no evidence “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 US Attorney and Special Counsel of their choosing for an 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 despite, not because of, any outside noise made by politicians,” prosecutors wrote.
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. However, House Republicans postponed plans to hold Hunter Biden in contempt of Congress for refusing to comply with a congressional subpoena in their ongoing probe on Tuesday, citing conversations with his attorneys that could resolve the stalemate.
So yet, no proof has emerged to show that the president abused his position or received payments, however, ethical concerns have been raised regarding the Biden family’s overseas business connections.