According to recent reports, Hunter Biden has lost his license to practice law in Washington, D.C., following his felony conviction in his federal gun trial. The president’s son was found guilty on all charges related to making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm.
Subsequently, the Office of Disciplinary Counsel, a body that deals with penalties for members of the D.C. bar, wrote a letter to the D.C. Court of Appeals requesting that Hunter “is suspended immediately from the practice of law in the District of Columbia pending resolution of this matter.”
Reportedly, the D.C. bar considers any felony to be a “serious crime,” where bar policy requires that the court suspend the law license of any convicted felon regardless of appeal status. However, the court has the authority to waive the suspension “when it appears in the interest of justice to do so.”
The president’s son was found guilty on three separate felony gun charges in the trial held in Delaware earlier this month. The charges in which the jury determined he was guilty of include making a false statement in the purchase of a gun, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed gun dealer, and possession of a gun by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.
The outcome of the trial has sent shockwaves throughout American politics, where it marks the first time a sitting president’s son has been convicted of a crime. The American Tribune reported on comments from former President Donald Trump, who notably expressed empathy toward Joe Biden when addressing the conviction.
The presumptive Republican presidential nominee added, “It’s a very tough thing. It’s a very tough situation for a father, it’s a very tough situation for a brother or sister, and it goes on, and it’s not stopping, whether it’s alcohol or drugs or whatever it may be. It’s a tough thing, and so that’s a tough moment for the family. It’s a tough moment for any family involved in that.”
Throughout the trial Hunter’s legal team had blamed MAGA Republicans for pushing prosecutors to investigate the presidents’ son. Biden’s attorneys suggested that there was GOP “partisan interference” in the judicial process.
His legal team said, “As expected, prosecutors filed charges today that they deemed were not warranted just six weeks ago following a five-year investigation into this case. The evidence in this matter has not changed in the last six weeks, but the law has and so has MAGA Republicans’ improper and partisan interference in this process.”
Hunter’s attorney’s further argued, “Hunter Biden possessing an unloaded gun for 11 day [sic] was not a threat to public safety, but a prosecutor, with all the power imaginable, bending to political pressure presents a grave threat to our system of justice. We believe these charges are barred by the agreement the prosecutors made with Mr. Biden, the recent rulings by several federal courts that this statute is unconstitutional, and the facts that he did not violate that law, and we plan to demonstrate all of that in court.”
Featured image credit: Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hunter_Biden_and_Abbe_Lowell_in_2023.jpg
"*" indicates required fields