Tag: Hunter Biden

Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, said in court that he did not do anything wrong when it comes to having a handgun illegally in Delaware.

The prosecutors say that Mr. Biden, who is 53 years old, did not tell the truth about using drugs when he filled out the forms to buy the weapon in 2018.

Mr Biden admitted to using a lot of crack cocaine, but he says he didn’t do anything illegal.

If he is found guilty of the three federal charges, he could be sent to prison for a maximum of 25 years.

A proposed agreement to settle the charges suddenly fell apart in July, so Mr. Biden was formally accused shortly after.

He was accused of telling lies twice and owning a gun illegally. The charges are about him buying a gun at a store in Delaware in October 2018. He had the gun for about 11 days.

According to Mr. Biden, as he wrote in his book published in 2021, he was heavily addicted to something at that time.

Two of the charges against him say that he could be sentenced to a maximum of 10 years in prison. This is because there are claims that Mr. Biden was not honest about his drug use on official documents. A third charge, linked to him having a gun while using drugs, can result in a sentence of up to five years.

In September, Mr. Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, filed a document in court where they asked for Mr. Biden to appear in court remotely instead of in person. In that document, Lowell also stated that Mr. Biden would say he is not guilty.

He showed up on Tuesday in a courthouse in Wilmington, Delaware – where the Bidens live.

Hallie Biden, who is the widow of Hunter’s brother Beau, found the gun in his car, which is the main point of the case. Biden threw the weapon into a trash can because she was worried he might use it to harm himself.

It was found and given back to the store, but not before it caused the police in Delaware and the US Secret Service to look into it separately.

In June, prosecutors and Hunter Biden’s lawyers made a deal. Hunter Biden agreed to admit that he had a gun illegally and he also promised to get help for his addiction and be watched by authorities. In simpler terms, he would also get in trouble for not paying his taxes on time in 2017 and 2018, but with smaller charges called misdemeanors.

The judge, Maryellen Noreika, said she couldn’t simply approve the agreement without reviewing it carefully. She also said that the solution to the gun charge in the deal was not normal.

The tax charges were dropped in August, but prosecutors might bring them back again in Washington DC or California.

In September, Mr. Biden sued the Internal Revenue Service. He claimed that two of their agents wanted to purposely focus on him and make him feel ashamed by sharing his private tax information.

This situation could imply that Hunter Biden might have to go to court for a potential crime, at the same time his father is running for president again.

The US attorney general has declared that a special counsel with expanded authority will now be looking into Joe Biden‘s son Hunter.

David Weiss, the federal prosecutor who has already brought charges in the case, now has more respect due to Merrick Garland.

The president’s son’s plea agreement on tax and gun charges was rejected earlier this month.

The investigation of Hunter Biden‘s financial transactions is being pushed for by Republicans.

Mr. Garland indicated that he was making the decision in response to a request made by Mr. Weiss earlier this week in a shocking revelation at the Department of Justice on Friday.

The new classification will provide the prosecutor additional tools to carry out the investigation and perhaps file charges outside of Delaware.

When the special counsel’s job is complete, Mr. Garland said a report will be produced, and the justice department will make as much of it public as is practical.

“The appointment of Mr. Weiss reinforces for the American people the department’s commitment to both independence and accountability in particularly sensitive matters,” Mr. Garland said at a news conference.

Chris Clark, Hunter Biden’s attorney, responded in a statement, saying, “We are confident that when all of these manoeuvres are over, my client will have resolution and will be successfully moving on with his life.”

The probe has already been ongoing for five years, Mr. Clark noted.

In 2018, former President Donald Trump chose Mr. Weiss to fill the position of US attorney in Delaware. Soon after, in 2019, he began an investigation into claims that Hunter Biden had engaged in criminal activity.

According to the US Attorney’s Office in Delaware, Hunter Biden has since been charged with two misdemeanour tax offences for allegedly failing to pay income taxes in 2017 and 2018, years in which he made more than $1.5 million (£1.1 million).

He is also accused of taking illegal narcotics and having a gun in his possession, which is a felony.

Hunter Biden earlier made a deal with the prosecution to accept guilt to the firearms violation and to the tax charges in order to avoid going to jail.

Judge Maryellen Noreika of the US District Court rejected the agreement due to its “non standard terms” and the “unusual” character of the suggested resolution for the gun accusation.

Hunter Biden has since attempted to reach a plea agreement with the prosecution, but to no avail. In a court document filed on Friday, Mr. Weiss’s legal team stated that they now anticipate that the matter will go to trial and that they may bring additional, more serious accusations in California or Washington, DC.

Republicans want the president and the younger Mr. Biden to both face additional criminal charges. They assert that Mr. Biden benefited financially from his son’s business ventures in China and the Ukraine.

Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy stated that regardless of the special counsel’s appointment, the Republican-led body would still be looking into the president and his son.

He shared the worry of several Republicans who felt that Mr. Weiss’s investigation had not been aggressive enough.

Other Republicans have questioned whether the push to relocate the trial from Delaware, where it had been overseen by Ms Noreika, a Trump appointee, was an effort to find a legal setting more accommodating to the Bidens.

The White House dismissed the charges as “insane conspiracy theories” and denied Mr. Biden’s involvement in his son’s business dealings.

Mr. Weiss has been looking at this issue for years. He has not yet discovered any proof that Hunter Biden’s business interests have profited from his father’s position as president.

The special counsel’s appointment, together with the potential for further charges that might result in a jury trial, almost guarantees that the investigation into Hunter Biden will continue well into the 2024 presidential election cycle, if not past the actual election day. White House officials will continue to be distracted by it even if they had hoped for a resolution not long ago.

However, the decision on Friday might help dispel some of the conservative arguments that the US has two sets of justice—one for Republicans and one for the Bidens.

The Democrats’ likely presidential candidate Joe Biden has demanded justice over the killing of an unarmed black man in the US state of Georgia.

Mr Biden said his heart went out to the family of Ahmaud Arbery.

Mr Arbery, 25, was jogging in February when confronted by an ex-policeman and his son. Video purported to show the shooting emerged online on Tuesday.

A district attorney in Georgia has now ruled that a grand jury should decide whether charges should be brought.

An earlier decision by a prosecutor in the Brunswick jurisdiction argued there was no probable cause to arrest Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis, 34, the New York Times has reported.

How did Arbery die?

Mr Arbery was out running in the Satilla Shores neighbourhood of Brunswick in Georgia’s Glynn County early in the afternoon on 23 February.

In a police report, Gregory McMichael says he saw Mr Arbery and believed he resembled the suspect in a series of break-ins.

He and his son armed themselves and pursued him in a pick-up truck.

In the police report, Gregory McMichael says he and his son had said “stop, stop, we want to talk to you” and that Mr Arbery had attacked his son. Shots were fired, with Mr Arbery falling to the street.

Mr Arbery’s mother, Wanda Cooper, said police told her her son had been involved in a burglary before the incident, but the family say they do not believe the keen jogger had committed a crime and he was unarmed.

What does the video show?

It was initially posted on a local radio station website but was then taken down.

But CNN included the video in its report of the story.

However, it said it did not know who recorded the footage and could not independently confirm its authenticity.

The 36-second video is shot from a vehicle following the pick-up truck said to be involved in the incident.

It shows a man jogging and then approaching the stationary pick-up from behind. He tries to bypass the truck and then is seen struggling with a man carrying a shotgun. There is muffled shouting and shotgun shots are heard.

A second man is standing in the bed of the pick-up. The second man is then shown with a pistol standing alongside the other armed man with the jogger no longer in view.

Although not shown in its video, CNN says that after a third gunshot the jogger recoils and blood appears on his T-shirt below his ribcage.

What have Mr Biden and other officials said?

Joe Biden sent out a tweet saying: “The video is clear: Ahmaud Arbery was killed in cold blood. My heart goes out to his family, who deserve justice and deserve it now. It is time for a swift, full, and transparent investigation into his murder.”

A statement from Lee Merritt, a lawyer for Mr Arbery’s family, said: “This is murder. The series of events captured in this video confirm what all the evidence indicated prior to its release.”

Image copyrightEPA

Tom Durden, the district attorney for the Atlantic Judicial Circuit, decided on Tuesday that a grand jury should be involved.

“After careful review of the evidence,” he wrote in a statement, “I am of the opinion that the case should be presented to the grand jury of Glynn County for consideration of criminal charges.”

Governor Brian Kemp tweeted that “Georgians deserve answers”.

The McMichaels have not been charged and have not so far responded to the video. CNN said Gregory McMichael had earlier told it he would not be commenting.

The New York Times said it had obtained a letter in which a prosecutor had earlier argued there was not sufficient probable cause for arrest because the pursuers were legally carrying firearms, were within their rights to follow “a burglary suspect” and were able as private persons to “arrest an offender if the offence is committed in his presence or within his immediate knowledge”.

Source: bbc.com