Hunter BidenThe conviction on three gun-related charges poses complicated legal and political challenges – for his presidential father Joe Bidenand for the legal system as a whole.
The verdict is sure to ripple through an already tense and troubled political landscape, coming just two weeks after Donald Trump’s felony conviction in New York.
Here are some of the top questions about what comes next.
What happens now?
There are several routine steps that all federal defendants must complete following a conviction. First, Biden will have to interview a probation officer from the U.S. Probation and Pretrial Services System. He will be asked about, among other things, his personal history, mental health and the circumstances that led to his conviction.
The probation office will use that information to write a presentence report for Judge Maryellen Noreika, who oversaw the trial and will handle the sentencing. After the verdict was handed down on Tuesday, Noreika said she expects a sentencing hearing in about four months.
At some point before the sentencing hearing, prosecutors and Biden’s attorneys will each submit sentencing memos to the judge that recommend punishment and summarize Biden’s personal and family history, his relationship to his community and any factors related to his conviction , such as its history of content. abuse.
After reviewing the presentence report and sentencing memos, the judge will impose a sentence on Biden during a sentencing hearing. Although Biden faces a maximum of 25 years in prison for the three charges, the judge has a menu of other sentencing options in addition to prison time, including probation, house arrest or even a curfew.
Will Biden go to jail?
The likelihood of Biden being sentenced to prison is “pretty low,” said Jeffrey Brown, co-chair of Dechert LLP’s enforcement and litigation practice, who previously served as co-head of the general crimes unit at the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan.
“I think he has a lot of sympathetic factors in his favor that would favor a non-incarceration sentence,” Brown said. These include Biden’s lack of criminal history, the likelihood that many people, including some prominent figures, will write to the judge in support of him and the fact that the charges against him do not often go to trial.
The judge must take into account sentencing differences, Brown said, and “I would be surprised if there is much precedent for people going to trial and being sentenced to prison for this crime.”
If he is sentenced to prison, can he remain free while he appeals?
Biden has a significant chance of deferring a prison sentence while he appeals the verdict, Brown said. He predicted that if Biden does indeed get a prison sentence, it will be quite short, and that judges sometimes allow defendants to delay shorter sentences while they appeal — otherwise a defendant could serve the entire sentence before the appeal is resolved.
Even if Biden can’t avoid any jail time, Brown said, he might not end up in jail on Election Day. That’s because his sentencing hearing likely won’t take place until October, and after that he would have to be sent to a prison and given a surrender date, making it a “close call” as to whether Biden would be ordered to stand against the time he ended up in prison. early November.
“Everything would have to go very quickly and smoothly before he ended up in jail on Election Day,” Brown said.
Can Hunter Biden still vote for his father?
It depends. If Biden is registered to vote in Delaware, that’s highly unlikely. The state only allows felons to consent after they have served their entire sentence — including any probation or supervised release, which typically lasts at least a year. That means if Biden is convicted about four months after his conviction, he will no longer be eligible to vote this election cycle.
But Biden has recently been living in California. If it’s registered there, it’s a different story. The state allows felons to register and vote as long as they are not serving time in a local, state or federal prison or detention center. Given that Noreika has indicated she will hold a sentencing hearing in October, Biden would almost certainly have the opportunity to vote early, if not on Election Day itself, before a potential prison sentence takes effect.
Can Joe Biden pardon his son?
The president said last week that he would not pardon his son.
But he can always go back on that promise. And pardon isn’t his only option.
Presidents have virtually unlimited power to pardon federal crimes, and they can use the pardon power — which is enshrined in the Constitution — for virtually any reason and on anyone, except perhaps themselves.
He would also be able to commute any prison sentence his son receives, keeping the criminal conviction intact and saving his son time in federal incarceration.
The real question for the president is his view of politics. Pardoning his son after a jury conviction would fuel Republicans’ claims that Democrats have tilted the justice system in favor of their allies and against their opponents. It also appears to run counter to Biden’s paean to the sanctity of the criminal justice system after Trump’s own jury conviction in Manhattan.
Trump himself exercised the pardon power almost exclusively for the benefit of political allies and friends. But Biden’s choice appears certain to arrive at the most sensitive moment of his re-election campaign, at a time when his opponent is facing federal charges in Washington, DC and Florida.
However, there is precedent for politically controversial pardons for family members – issued after elections, of course. In January 2001, on his last day in office, President Bill Clinton pardoned his brother Roger Clinton Jr. for a 1985 drug conviction.
What about Hunter Biden’s other criminal case?
Special counsel David Weiss, the Trump-appointed federal prosecutor who brought the gun case, has also sued Biden in a separate case in California. In some ways, the case, which will go to trial in September, poses a more serious threat: It accuses him of a wide range of tax crimes spanning years, including failing to pay millions of dollars in taxes on time, even though he was still alive. an extravagant lifestyle.
His conviction in Delaware is unlikely to have much impact on the proceedings in California. Although prosecutors were able to use the underlying evidence that led to his Delaware case as part of an effort to show Biden’s state of mind during the years he allegedly evaded his taxes, evidence from unrelated criminal proceedings or prior convictions is typically not admitted as evidence. That’s because it could bias the jury to convict someone based on evidence unrelated to the crimes charged.
