A federal jury in Delaware today began hearing the gun case against Hunter Biden, which alleges that he committed three crimes when he bought a revolver in October 2018. The central charge against the president's son is a violation of 18 USC 922(g)(3), which makes it a felony for an "unlawful user" of a "controlled substance" to possess a firearm. The two other charges, also felonies, involve Biden's alleged misrepresentation of himself as a legal gun buyer.
As a matter of statutory law, the case against Biden is straightforward. He has publicly admitted that he was regularly smoking crack cocaine around the time he bought the gun, and prosecutors say investigators found cocaine residue on the leather pouch in which he had kept it. As a matter of constitutional law, the viability of the case is less clear, although a pretrial ruling delayed consideration of that issue until after Biden is convicted, assuming that he is.
