WILMINGTON, Delaware (Reuters) – Hunter Biden faces trial Monday on criminal gun-related charges. Below is an overview of the most important moments leading up to the trial, the first for a child of a sitting president.
May 13, 2014: Burisma Group, a private energy company in Ukraine, says Hunter Biden will join its board of directors. Joe Biden is vice president and oversees Ukraine policy for President Barack Obama’s administration. Burisma’s founder was the subject of a series of criminal investigations by Ukrainian authorities, which would close in 2017 after the company and its founder made payments to authorities.
May 30, 2015: Joe Biden’s eldest of two sons, Beau Biden, dies of cancer. Hunter Biden would later write in his autobiography, Beautiful Things, that it caused his addiction.
October 12, 2018: Hunter Biden purchases a Colt Cobra .38 Special revolver and on the federal firearms purchase form, he answered “no” when asked if he was an unlawful user of a controlled substance or an addict. Later that month, his sister-in-law threw it in a public garbage bin, where it was discovered by a man collecting recyclables and turned over to police.
2019: U.S. Attorney for the District of Delaware David Weiss begins investigating Hunter Biden for possible tax and other financial crimes, according to media reports. Weiss was appointed by US President Donald Trump.
April 2019: Joe Biden announces his bid for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination. Hunter Biden’s term on Burisma’s board is ending.
July 25, 2019: President Trump spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, pressuring him to investigate an allegation that Joe Biden, while in office, pushed Ukrainian authorities to close an investigation that implicated Hunter’s work Biden for Burisma could imply. The Bidens denied the allegations. The US House of Representatives would later impeach Trump over the call, although the Senate voted against removing Trump from power.
June 20, 2023: Hunter Biden reaches an agreement to plead guilty to two counts of willfully failing to pay income taxes and enter into a deal to avoid conviction on gun-related charges. The deal led to accusations from Republicans that Hunter Biden received favorable treatment as the president’s son.
July 26, 2023: U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika said she cannot accept a plea deal Hunter Biden made with prosecutors because she worried it was too broad and protected him from other possible business-related charges.
September 14, 2023: Hunter Biden is charged in Delaware with gun-related crimes and faces up to 25 years in prison. He denies the charges and later pleads not guilty.
December 8, 2023: Hunter Biden is charged with federal tax crimes in Los Angeles and will later plead not guilty. His lawyer Abbe Lowell accuses Weiss, who led the investigation, of political bias.
June 3, 2024: Jury selection begins in Wilmington, Delaware on the gun-related charges. According to the parties, the process could take more than two weeks.
(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware; Editing by Nick Zieminski)
