The Department of Justice’s (DOJ) decision to bring felony gun charges against Hunter Biden protects both him and his father, legal experts argued.
Hunter Biden was indicted on three counts Thursday for making false statements and possessing a gun while addicted to drugs, charges stemming from his purchase of a Colt Cobra revolver in October 2018. Legal experts said the gun charge, which is based on a statute that may soon be found unconstitutional, protects the Bidens, as it is the only charge that does not implicate the President.
“It’s the one charge that will not lead to President Biden,” Mike Davis, founder and president of the Article III Project, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, describing the charges as a “cover-up” in a separate tweet. “Tax fraud, wire fraud, Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and Foreign Agent Registration Act—all those charges could have led to President Biden. But the Biden Justice Department declined to pursue those charges and instead pursued a gun charge that is in serious constitutional doubt.”
Former Assistant United States Attorney Andy McCarthy similarly said on Fox News Thursday that it was “the only charge that this prosecutor could’ve brought against Hunter in which Hunter’s father is not implicated.”
An appeals court ruled in August that the statute Hunter was charged with violating, which bars gun possession for anyone who is an “unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance, violates the Second Amendment.
“In short, our history and tradition may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage,” the ruling written by Circuit Judge Jerry Smith, a Reagan appointee, states. “Nor do more generalized traditions of disarming dangerous persons support this restriction on nonviolent drug users.”
Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell already pointed to the ruling to argue the case will “be dismissed before trial.”
“The only change that has occurred between when they investigated [this alleged crime] and today is that the law changed,” Hunter’s attorney Abbe Lowell told ABC News Friday. “But the law didn’t change in favor of the prosecution. The law changed against it.” (RELATED: Hunter Biden Indicted On Three Gun Charges)
Don’t be fooled.
Today’s indictment of Hunter Biden for gun felonies is just more coverup by Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who has protected the Bidens for years.
Weiss, handpicked by both Democrat home-state senators in Delaware, let the statute of limitations expire on…
— 🇺🇸 Mike Davis 🇺🇸 (@mrddmia) September 14, 2023
Lawyer and former federal prosecutor Bill Shipley said on Twitter the charge is “on shaky legal ground with the trend in 2nd Amendment jurisprudence.”
“Doesn’t matter if it is Hunter or someone else, the DOJ should not be filing these counts until there is further clarity in the appeals courts that some kind of effort under this statute going forward is going to survive a Second Amendment challenge,” Shipley said.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of 25 years and $750,000 in fines, according to court documents.
Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz said on his podcast Friday that the charge was brought “by design, to insulate Joe Biden.”
“The reason this matters is because there’s considerable evidence that Hunter Biden solicited and received tens of millions of dollars from corrupt foreign players in exchange for official favors from his dad, Joe Biden, now the president of the United States,” he said.
“The Biden DOJ was prepared to give him [Hunter] complete and total immunity for any and all criminal conduct, especially, the criminal conduct that implicated his father, and that really, I believe, was the entire objective of this whole thing,” Cruz continued.
However, Politico reported in 2021 that Secret Service agents asked the owner of the store where Hunter purchased the gun to hand over paperwork from the sale in 2018, which the owner refused to do, though he later provided it to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Neither Joe Biden nor Hunter Biden were under the protection of the Secret Service at the time.
Special counsel David Weiss requested to dismiss tax charges filed against Hunter Biden in August in order to refile in another venue, a motion District Judge Maryellen Noreika approved. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss as special counsel in August.
Biden’s initial plea deal, which would have had him plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and enter a diversion agreement allowing him to avoid jail time for the felony gun charge, fell apart under Noreika’s questioning during a July 26 hearing after she highlighted a section of the diversion agreement promising broad immunity for future charges.
Weiss and the White House did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment.
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