Opening statements are set to begin in the federal gun case against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter
Lawyers will make their opening statements Tuesday in the federal gun case against President Joe Biden’s son Hunter after a jury was seated for the trial while the first lady watched from the courtroom and the president sent a message of support.
Hunter Biden has been charged with three felonies stemming from a 2018 firearm purchase when he was, according to his memoir, in the throes of a crack addiction. He has been accused of lying to a federally licensed gun dealer, making a false claim on the application by saying he was not a drug user and illegally having the gun for 11 days.
The proceedings come after the collapse of a deal with prosecutors that would have avoided the spectacle of a trial so close to the 2024 election. Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty and has argued he’s being unfairly targeted by the Justice Department after Republicans decried the now-defunct plea deal as special treatment for the Democratic president’s son.
The trial is unfolding just days after Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was convicted of 34 felonies in New York City. The two criminal cases are unrelated, but their proximity underscores how the courts have taken center stage during the 2024 campaign.
Jury selection moved at a clip Monday in the president’s home state, where Hunter Biden grew up and where, the elder Biden often says, the family is deeply established. Joe Biden spent 36 years as a senator there, commuting daily back and forth from Washington, D.C.
People just know the story of how Biden’s two young sons, Hunter and Beau, were injured in the car accident that killed his wife and baby girl in the early 1970s. And Beau Biden was the former state attorney general before he died at 46 from cancer.
Some prospective jurors were dismissed because they knew the family personally; others because they held both positive and negative political views about the Bidens and couldn’t be impartial. Still, it only took a day to find the jury of six men and six women plus four women serving as alternates, who will decide the case.
One potential juror who was sent home said she didn’t know whether she could be impartial because of the opinion she had formed about Hunter Biden based on media reports.
