Hunter Biden’s trial on three federal gun charges is tentatively scheduled to begin on June 3, a judge decided on Wednesday.
U.S. district judge Maryellen Noreika ruled the trial will start on June 3 at a status conference with Hunter Biden’s attorneys and special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors, the New York Post first reported.
A federal grand jury in Delaware indicted Hunter Biden in September on three felony counts connected to a firearm he purchased in 2018 while he battled drug addiction. Two of the felony gun charges are for false statements Hunter Biden allegedly made about his drug addiction in the process of purchasing the firearm. Hunter Biden is facing an additional charge for allegedly possessing the firearm for eleven days when he was addicted to drugs. The felony offenses carry a maximum of 25 years in prison. Last November, Hunter Biden authored an op-ed for USA Today downplaying the gun charges and accusing his opponents of weaponizing his drug addiction.
Hunter Biden’s memoir, Beautiful Things, chronicles his struggles with alcohol and drug addiction. Weiss and his team of prosecutors have noted some of the memoir’s sordid details in pretrial court filings responding to Hunter Biden’s attempts to get the gun charges dismissed. Texts discussing his drug usage and images of his lavish lifestyle are contained on Biden’s Apple iCloud server and abandoned laptop archive.
President Joe Biden, Hunter Biden’s father, is a staunch supporter of gun-control measures and an opponent of the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen Second Amendment case, a court decision used by Hunter Biden’s defense team to argue his prosecution is unconstitutional.
His attorneys have argued the pretrial diversion agreement for a single felony gun offense they agreed to with the Justice Department confers immunity onto Hunter Biden. The pretrial diversion agreement was connected to a guilty plea deal on two tax misdemeanors, and both arrangements fell apart in July because of a dispute between Hunter Biden’s lawyers and Delaware U.S. Attorney’s office over an immunity provision tucked into the diversion agreement.
Moreover, Biden’s lawyers believe he is the victim of selective prosecution by an illegally appointed special counsel. Attorney General Merrick Garland, an appointee of Joe Biden, made Weiss special counsel in August after the guilty plea deal and diversion agreement fell apart. Weiss is simultaneously the U.S. Attorney for Delaware.
The gun trial is likely to become a significant issue for President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign against former president Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee. At the same time, Hunter Biden is facing nine federal tax charges in California, where he is also scheduled to go to trial starting in late June.