Hunter Biden guilty verdict: Was the ‘first son’ treated fairly?

President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was convicted Tuesday on federal gun charges stemming from his purchase and possession of a firearm while being an active user of illegal drugs.

After deliberating for three hours, the jury in the Biden hometown of Wilmington, Delaware, convicted the president’s son on all three felony counts. Two were for making knowingly false statements about drug use on a 2018 firearms application at a Wilmington gun shop, and the other was for possessing the gun for 11 days. 

Sentencing will take place on a future date. According to the statutes under which he was convicted, the younger Mr. Biden could face up to 25 years in prison, but with no prior felonies and having acknowledged his past drug addiction, he would probably face a far lesser sentence, potentially including probation, fines, and other conditions. 

The verdict ends Part 1 of a unique episode in American history: the criminal prosecution and conviction of a sitting president’s son. Part 2 begins Sept. 5, when Mr. Biden is slated to go on trial in California for federal tax evasion. The two cases flow from a plea deal, now defunct, that Mr. Biden struck last year with the Justice Department. The agreement would have ended his legal jeopardy over the gun and tax charges – and, in the eyes of his defense team, potential prosecution over his foreign business dealings. 

That deal fell apart last July after two investigators from the IRS accused the Justice Department of hindering their investigation. Mr. Biden has lived under a legal cloud ever since. 

The conviction in Wilmington – where the Biden family is considered political royalty – seemed to allay some concerns that the jury might treat Mr. Biden deferentially and acquit him, at least in part because of his family’s prominence. 

Why these gun law charges are unusual in Hunter Biden’s case

But another issue arises: Is Mr. Biden facing multiple trials because of his last name? This question brings up rough parallels with former President Donald Trump, who was found guilty of 34 felonies related to a hush money deal to silence a porn star before the 2016 election. For both individuals, supporters argue the defendants are being targeted for political reasons. 

Mr. Biden’s case holds much less national import – after all, he’s not running for president, as Mr. Trump is (again) – but Mr. Biden’s prominence still matters. 

Evan Vucci/AP

A monitor is seen showing the Hunter Biden verdict in the White House Press Briefing Room June 11, 2024, in Washington.

“What makes this complicated ... is that it leaves outsiders wondering whether Hunter Biden was selected out or whether this is just the inevitable result of a process that put him in the spotlight,” says Daniel Richman, a law professor at Columbia University and former federal prosecutor in the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Prosecutors, he says, generally pursue convicted felons who lie on gun forms, but cases like that of Mr. Biden, who had no prior convictions, are pursued less frequently. 

But in Mr. Biden’s case, the prosecution’s case was helped by the defendant himself. The president’s son had documented his drug use in a 2021 memoir, “Beautiful Things,” passages of which were played in the courtroom, with Mr. Biden himself having recorded the audio version. 

Mr. Biden’s infamous laptop also made an appearance at the trial. According to a report last week from inside the courtroom, a prosecutor waved the defendant’s silver Apple MacBook Pro while reminding an FBI special agent of the data that had been seized during the federal investigation of Mr. Biden. 

The politics swirling around the case are unavoidable. President Biden stated flatly last week in an ABC News interview that he would not pardon his son, and that he believed the trial was fair. (Mr. Trump, by contrast, has claimed the jury verdict in his recent trial was “rigged.”) After the verdict, the president released a statement of support for his son, and said he “will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.”

Ironically, just hours after the verdict, President Biden made a long-scheduled appearance at a forum on gun safety in Washington, but he did not mention his son. 

For political families, “a glaring, unforgiving spotlight”

As the president gears up for the November election, there’s no denying that his only surviving son’s legal problems will weigh heavily. The president has been known to call Mr. Biden daily to check in, especially after he fell into an addiction to crack following the 2015 death of Beau Biden, the president’s other son. 

Whether Americans will feel sympathy for the president’s son, especially those who don’t support his father politically, is open to debate. Mr. Biden is, after all, the son of privilege – a Yale Law School graduate whose father has walked the corridors of power in Washington for more than 50 years. 

But as Patti Davis, the younger daughter of President Ronald Reagan, wrote in Monday’s New York Times, living as the child of a famous father, under “a glaring, unforgiving spotlight,” isn’t easy. Ms. Davis knows whereof she speaks, having struggled with drug addiction herself as a young woman. 

“There are a lot of Hunter Bidens in this world, people who fell in way over their heads, who long for someone to believe they can recover and construct their lives differently,” she wrote. “You just don’t hear about them on the evening news.”

Patrik Jonsson reported from Tybee Island, Georgia.