Why is Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, on trial in a trial that begins today?

Hunter Biden is accused of lying about his addiction problems while filling out a form to purchase a gun. He faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.

Less than a week after the criminal conviction of former President Donald Trump, another legal episode risks enlivening American political life. The trial of Hunter Biden, son of the President of the United States, begins Monday June 3 in a federal court in Delaware. Regularly targeted by Republicans and involved in several cases, he is this time accused of having lied by claiming, when buying a firearm, that he did not suffer from addiction.

The accusations against Joe Biden’s son have their source in 2018. While he wants to obtain a revolver, Hunter Biden fills out, as the law requires him to do, a form in which he must notably indicate whether he is dependent on “a narcotic product – to this question, Hunter Biden answers in the negative.

For federal prosecutors, this assertion is contrary to what he says in a book published in 2021, Beautiful Things. Joe Biden’s son opens up about his struggles in the years following the death of his brother Beau in 2015. He describes drinking vodka from the bottle, his nocturnal wanderings in search of crack around seedy convenience stores and his failed attempts to detoxification. And says he overcame his addictions in 2019, that is to say after purchasing the firearm.

This temporal contradiction is at the heart of theargument of the prosecution, who sees it as proof of a lie punishable by American law. “A potential buyer must complete a firearm transaction file (…), and certify that all of his answers on the form are true and correct”underlines federal prosecutor David Weiss in a press release published in September, a few days after the indictment by a federal grand jury. “In reality, he knew that this statement was false,” continues the prosecutor.

At the end of the trial, which is expected to last two weeks, the jury will have to decide on two counts relating to the form he filled out, and a third on the very fact that he was in possession of the revolver while He was a drug user for eleven days before his partner got rid of the weapon by throwing it in a trash can.

In October, Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to all three counts. SLawyers are happy with the idea that Hunter Biden knowingly lied when filling out the form. According to the defense, the president’s son did not consider himself a drug addict at the time. In court documents, one of his lawyers, Abbe Lowell, assures that the legal meaning of this term had not been explained to his client: “Someone like Hunter Biden, who had just finished an 11-day cleansing and was then living with someone sober, might actually have thought he was not, at that point, a drug user. [de drogue] or a drug addict.”

Hunter Biden will be judged by a jury of twelve citizens, whose selection process begins Monday. Due to the notoriety of the accused, potential jurors will have to answer several questions concerning in particular their membership in political movements, their experience with drugs and their opinion concerning weapons legislation, says the AP agency. Prosecutors and defense attorneys will have the ability to strike a number of candidates.

Hunter Biden, 54, faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. But in practice, few people convicted of similar crimes actually go behind bars in the United States. Joe Biden’s son was also indicted in December for tax fraud, accused of evading, by a “stratagem”, required to pay $1.4 million in taxes. He has pleaded not guilty and a trial is expected later this year in California.