Though Hunter Biden was not charged with tax violations or Foreign Agent Registration Act violations when indicted by Special Counsel Weiss, he still faces a significant penalty if found guilty, as he could face up to 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines.
The eyebrow-raising fine and possible prison term are the result of Hunter facing not just one charge for allegedly lying on the firearms purchase form but three. He faces charges for making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm, a false statement relative to information required to be kept by a federal firearms licensed dealer, and possession of firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.
Each of those charges alone is weighty, and so together they could prove, if not dismissed quite the problem for Hunter. The first charge, making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm, carries a maximum of to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Further, it can lead to up to three years of supervised release.
The second charge Hunter faces, giving a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federal firearms licensed dealer, is only marginally less serious. A conviction on that count can lead to up to half a decade in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.
Finally, possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance is serious as well. It can result in up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a $250,000 fine.
So, if the worst-case scenario for Hunter resulted from the charges, he faces 25 years in prison, three-quarters of a million dollars in fines, and three years of supervised release. That is assuming he receives the maximum on each charge and could not serve the sentences concurrently, which is unlikely to happen.
Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, ripped into the charges. He 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.”
Continuing, the attorney characterized the charges as unfair because Hunter was never a public danger, saying, “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.”
Concluding, Mr. Lowell argued that, in any case, the government is barred from bringing these charges against Hunter Biden, saying, “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.”
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