Hunter Biden, son of U.S. President Joe Biden, and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden arrive at federal court in Wilmington, Delaware, on June 5, 2024, during his trial on criminal weapons charges.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters
A federal judge announced Friday that Hunter Biden will be sentenced in his gun case in Delaware on Nov. 13, eight days after the 2024 presidential election.
Hunter Biden, the only surviving son of President Joe Biden, was found guilty in June by a jury in U.S. District Court in Wilmington on three counts related to the purchase and possession of a revolver while using illegal drugs.
The 54-year-old is the first child of a sitting US president to ever be convicted of criminal offenses.
Hunter Biden faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, but due to federal sentencing guidelines, he will likely receive a much lighter sentence from Judge Maryellen Noreika.
Hunter Biden faces another criminal trial in federal court in Los Angeles in September. He is charged with nine counts of allegedly failing to pay at least $1.4 million in taxes over several years.
On July 18, his lawyers asked the judges in both the Delaware and LA cases to dismiss the charges.
In their motions, Hunter Biden's lawyers cited a new opinion by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioning whether the Justice Department has the authority to appoint special counsels as prosecutors, as well as the related dismissal of former President Donald Trump's case in connection with the secrecy of criminal documents in a federal court in Florida.
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Attorney General Merrick Garland, the head of the U.S. Department of Justice, appointed U.S. Attorney for Delaware David Weiss as special counsel in August 2023 to lead the investigation into Hunter Biden and prosecute him if necessary.
Garland had also appointed Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate Trump over his handling of classified documents after leaving the White House and his efforts to overturn his election defeat to President Biden in 2020.
Smith secured grand jury indictments against Trump in both cases and is appealing the decision of a federal judge in Florida who dismissed the classified documents case last month. The judge, Aileen Cannon, had declared Smith's appointment as special counsel unconstitutional and cited Thomas' recent opinion in her ruling.
Hunter Biden's legal troubles and unsavory past attracted considerable attention when his father ran for re-election against Trump, who had appointed Noreika and Cannon as judges.
President Biden dropped out of the race on July 21, undermining his son's usefulness as a political weapon for Republicans.
The president endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris as his successor against Trump on the same day that Trump dropped out of the campaign.
On Friday, Democratic National Committee Chairman Jaime Harrison said Harris had won enough delegate votes to secure the party's nomination, although the outcome was not yet official. The official announcement of the results is scheduled for Monday.
Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a crime this spring. He is awaiting sentencing in a case in which a New York state court jury found him guilty of falsifying business records related to a hush-money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016.
In addition to the criminal election interference case in Washington, DC, Trump is facing separate charges in state court in Atlanta related to his attempt to overturn his loss to President Biden in Georgia in the 2020 election.
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