WILMINGTON, Del. — Jury selection is to begin Monday, June 3, 2024, in the federal gun case against President Joe Biden’s son after a deal with prosecutors fell apart that would have avoided the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election.
Hunter Biden, who spent the weekend with his father, has been charged with three felonies stemming from a 2018 firearm purchase when he was, according to his memoir, in the throes of a crack addiction. He has been accused of lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application used to screen firearms applicants when he said he was not a drug user, and illegally having the gun for 11 days.
He has pleaded not guilty and has argued he’s being unfairly targeted by the Justice Department, after Republicans decried the now-defunct deal as special treatment.
The trial comes just four days after Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felonies in New York City after a jury found him guilty of a scheme to cover up a hush money payment to a porn actor to fend off damage to his 2016 presidential campaign. The two criminal cases are not related, but their proximity underscores how the criminal courtroom has taken center stage during the 2024 campaign.
Hunter Biden is also facing a separate trial in California in September on charges of failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes. Both cases were to have been resolved through a deal with prosecutors last July, the culmination of a years-long investigation into his business dealings.
But Judge Maryellen Noreika questioned some unusual aspects of the deal that included a proposed guilty plea to misdemeanor offenses to resolve the tax crimes and a “diversion agreement” on the gun charge, which meant that as long as he stayed out of trouble for two years, the case would be dismissed. The lawyers squabbled over the agreement, could not come to a resolution and the deal fell apart. Attorney General Merrick Garland then appointed the top investigator as a special counsel in August, and a month later Hunter Biden was indicted. / AP