Who is Hunter Biden, convicted in gun possession case

( Spanish) –– President Joe Biden announced Sunday that he had pardoned his son Hunter Biden, who had been convicted of three federal charges in a gun case. The jury had concluded that he violated laws intended to prevent drug addicts from owning firearms. It was the first time that a member of a president’s immediate family was convicted of a crime during his term, although his crimes predate Joe Biden’s time in the White House.

This decision by the president not only marks a change in position as he prepares to leave office but also breaks a public promise he had made repeatedly before and after dropping out of the 2024 presidential race. The president and his chief White House spokesperson have said unequivocally, even after Trump won the 2024 election, that he would not pardon Hunter Biden or commute his sentence.

Hunter Biden, 54, is the president’s son with his first wife, Neilia Hunter Biden, who died along with his daughter Naomi in a car accident in 1972, in which both Hunter and the couple’s other son, Beau, were injured. seriously injured. More than four decades later, in 2015, Beau died of brain cancer.

Currently it is father of three daughters adults he had with his first wife and a one-year-old son with his current wife.

According to his autobiographytitled “Beautiful Things,” Biden reveals his astonishing fall into crack addiction and how his father was the one who encouraged him. The memoir details the young Biden’s lifelong struggles with drugs and alcohol and says his first drink was at age 8, drinking a glass of champagne at a family event.

However, the most revealing part of the book is in the description of his father’s years of support, sadness and helplessness in his only living son’s battle against addiction. One of the stories includes a particularly bad drunk, at a time when Joe Biden was vice president of the United States.

“He seemed horrified by what he saw,” Biden says in “Beautiful Things.” “’I know you’re not okay, Hunter,’ he said, studying me and scanning the apartment. ‘You need help,’ he added.” The conversation ended in a trip to rehab and a period of sobriety, just in time. “Dad saved me (…) He never let me forget that not everything was lost.”

Biden never tried to hide his son’s drug problems, and these became particularly clear during the presidential campaign: “My son, like a lot of people, like a lot of people you know at home, had a drug problem,” Joe Biden said. “He overcame it, he fixed it, he worked on it and I’m proud of him.”

During this campaign, Hunter Biden was in Donald Trump’s focus for his ties to Burisma Holdings, a natural gas company in Ukraine where he served on the board of directors and earned a five-figure salary per month. It is another of the passages from his autobiographyin which he explains his version of the events.

Although he claims to have done nothing wrong there, Biden admits that if he were offered the job again he would say “no,” if only to avoid scrutiny. Additionally, he admitted that the money he earned there fueled his addiction. Additional funds meant additional resources for drugs, which he used regularly, defining himself in this and other periods of his life as a “functioning addict.”

Hunter Biden was found guilty of illegally purchasing and possessing a gun while abusing or addicted to drugs, a violation of federal law. Of the three counts in the indictment settled this week, the first two were related to the purchase of a gun itself.

When a person purchases a gun, they must fill out a form with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) and affirm that they are legally authorized to purchase the gun. Hunter Biden was accused of lying on those forms.

Those questions include: Have you been convicted of a serious crime? Are you a fugitive? Are you in the country illegally? And, more importantly in this case, are you an “illegal user or addict” of illicit drugs? Hunter Biden supposedly checked the box that said “No.”

The third charge refers to possession of the weapon. It is also against federal law to possess a gun if you abuse drugs. Hunter Biden had the gun for 11 days in October 2018, before his girlfriend threw it in a dumpster because she was concerned about his mental health, according to the indictment and texts made public in recent court filings.

“Guns present a danger if they fall into the wrong hands, and that is the impetus behind these laws,” Nabeel Kibria, a Washington-based defense attorney who has handled hundreds of gun cases, told . “The evidence seems to be pretty stacked against Hunter… but who determines who is an addict? What are the clear rules that must be followed?

Regardless, having been pardoned by his father, Hunter Biden will not be sentenced for his crimes and there is no chance of him being sent to prison, which was a possibility. Once the judges overseeing their cases are notified of the pardon, they will likely cancel sentencing hearings, which were scheduled for Dec. 12 in the gun case and Dec. 16 in the tax case.

With reporting from ‘s Kate Bennett, Brian Stelter, Marshall Cohen and Holmes Lybrand.