You won’t believe the charge
I wonder how many thousands of Americans have committed this crime:
Special counsel David Weiss intends to seek an indictment against President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, relating to gun charges by the end of the month, the Justice Department said Wednesday.
Hunter Biden had previously reached a deal involving a felony gun possession charge that would have allowed him to avoid prosecution if he met certain conditions over a 24 month period. However, after his plea deal to resolve two tax charges fell apart in court, the future of the gun deal has been in limbo.
“The Speedy Trial Act requires that the Government obtain the return of an indictment by a grand jury by Friday, September 29, 2023, at the earliest. The Government intends to seek the return of an indictment in this case before that date,” the special counsel’s office said in a court filing.
Prosecutors did not say how many charges would be brought.
Hunter Biden’s gun-related legal troubles relate to a firearm he purchased in October 2018. While buying a revolver at Delaware gun shop, he lied on a federal form when he swore that he was not using, and was not addicted to, any illegal drugs – even though he was struggling with crack cocaine addiction at the time of the purchase.
It’s a federal crime to lie on that ATF form or to possess a firearm as a drug user. (Hunter Biden possessed the gun for about 11 days in 2018.) Prosecutors have previously said the statute of limitations for some of these offenses is set to expire in October.
In case you were wondering, Biden didn’t shoot anyone. Neither did he steal classified documents or stage an attempted coup. But just you wait and see, Hunter will end up in jail long before any of the Trumpers.
Yes there is a two tiered system of justice in this case:
[A]ccording to newly revealed Justice Department records, the odds of being charged for lying on this form are virtually nonexistent. In the 2019 fiscal year, when Hunter Biden purchased his gun, federal prosecutors received 478 referrals for lying on Form 4473 — and filed just 298 cases, according to data extracted from the U.S. attorneys’ case management system. That’s out of approximately 27 million background checks undertaken in a 12-month period.
The numbers were roughly similar for fiscal 2018 (444 referrals and 271 cases) and fiscal 2020 (433 referrals and 243 cases). The data does not indicate the success rate of the prosecutions.
The crime carries a penalty of 10 years. But nobody who hasn’t committed another crime with the gun or the drugs ever gets prosecuted.
I would be interested to see how they justify this considering their belief in unfettered gun rights — they even defend the rights of terrorists to own guns — except that they are shameless and they won’t have any trouble justifying it in this one case with a big smirk on their faces.
Maybe the Grand Jury won’t return an indictment…