A federal judge ruled that Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, will face a trial on federal gun charges on June 3 in Delaware.
The president’s son, 54, has pleaded not guilty to three felony charges related to him lying about his drug use when purchasing a gun in 2018. He faces up to 25 years in prison if he is convicted after the trial that could last up to nine days.
His gun trial on June 3 comes immediately for a separate trial in a case brought by Special Counsel David Weiss on nine tax charges set for June 20 in California.
Hunter tried to avoid the spectacle of a full trial by entering into what Republicans dubbed a ‘sweetheart’ plea deal with DOJ. But it fell apart spectacularly last summer and he is now facing the two jury trials.
It will surely cause a headache for his father Joe, who just secured the Democratic nomination for president last night going into the 2024 campaign swing.
Last month, Weiss published photos from Hunter’s iPhone and hard drive that the prosecutor said were proof he was using cocaine when he bought a gun.
But Hunter’s legal team says DOJ mistook sawdust for lines of cocaine during their investigation.
Hunter’s lawyers say the image in question was actually sent to his psychiatrist by someone else as a joke.
‘The prosecution is flat out wrong – both that Mr. Biden “took” this photograph and in claiming that it depicts “cocaine”,’ Biden’s lawyers said.
‘Multiple sources have pointed out, and a review of discovery confirms, this is actually a photo of sawdust from an expert carpenter and it was sent to Mr. Biden, not vice versa.’
‘More specifically, the discovery identifies this as a photo of a photo taken in the office of Mr. Biden’s then-psychiatrist Dr. Keith Ablow,’ Hunter’s lawyers said.
The court documents said Dr. Ablow initially received the image from a patient, who was a master carpenter, and later texted it to Hunter.
In his text to Hunter, the doctor wrote: ‘This one in my office is of lines of sawdust sent to me by a master carpenter who was a coke addict.’
‘The message accompanying that photo was meant to convey that Mr. Biden, too, could overcome any addiction,’ Hunter’s lawyers wrote.
They went on: ‘Mistaking sawdust for cocaine sounds more like a storyline from one of the 1980s Police Academy comedies than what should be expected in a high-profile prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice.’
Abbe Lowell, Hunter’s lawyer, said the sawdust mistake ‘amplifies why Mr. Biden and the court could not take what the prosecution said ‘at face value’.
Weiss has charged Hunter Biden with crimes including lying about his drug use when he purchased a gun in 2018. The president’s son has pleaded not guilty.
Hunter Biden’s lawyers accused the prosecution of being ‘reckless’ by making a ‘hyperbolic and sensational’ claim in relation to the sawdust picture.
They said it would ‘prejudice Mr. Biden in the public eye.’
The row over the picture came as Hunter’s lawyers filed a 22-page document relating to the sharing of evidence between the prosecution and defense.
