Unless something very surprising happens, a jury is likely to convict Hunter Biden shortly, reports Politico. Last week, federal prosecutor Derek Hines played clip after clip of the president’s son reading from the audiobook of his memoir, which describes in raw and evocative terms his yearslong struggle with drug addiction. Prosecutors had an FBI agent show the jury information retrieved from Biden’s phone and laptop that showed evidence of his substance abuse, including photos of cocaine and messages with a drug dealer.
It is illegal to purchase a firearm if you are an unlawful user of, or addicted to, a controlled substance. Any time the government’s key witness in a criminal case is effectively the defendant himself, things are not looking good for the defense. There are real reasons to believe this case should have never even gotten to a jury,
The defense was left with one key argument: that Biden did not “knowingly” make any misrepresentations when purchasing the gun because he may have thought he was clean at the time. It is not a compelling argument. Cases like this almost always result in convictions, but they usually end in plea deals, not jury verdicts. The statutes in this area are broad and punitive, and the elements of the offenses are relatively easy to prove. As a result, there are very few credible lines of defense at trial, and the logic of a guilty plea — which ensures at least some time off of the ultimate sentence — tends to be inescapable. Biden's attorneys have cited the relatively brief period of time that Biden possessed the gun (11 days) and the fact that he never used it before someone else disposed of it. The suggestion was that this was arguably a victimless crime. If the trial ends in a conviction, Biden will be able to raise a Second Amendment defense on appeal by pointing to the Supreme Court’s recent string of gun-friendly rulings.