Hunter Biden to be charged in gun case this month, prosecutor says

US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter will be charged before the end of September with a federal firearm offence after his plea deal went sour, the prosecutor said on Wednesday in a court filing.

Special Counsel David Weiss, who has investigated the president’s son for five years, said a grand jury would issue its indictment in the case before September 29.

According to the original Weiss charges filed in June, Biden failed to file his tax returns on time on earnings of more than US$1.5 million for 2017 and 2018.

He also bought and kept a handgun for a few weeks in 2018 even though he had, as he has openly admitted, a serious drug problem.

In a deal reached with Weiss in late July, Biden agreed to plea guilty to two minor tax charges.

In exchange he was offered probation, as he had already paid what he owed the government along with penalties.

In the same deal, Weiss agreed to suspend the felony gun charge if Biden completed “pretrial diversion”, which often involves counselling or rehabilitation.

But in a dramatic July 26 hearing, the deal collapsed over the issue of whether Biden would have been immune from any other charges also investigated by Weiss, including possible crimes related to his business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere.

Hunter Biden probe can be start of an influence peddling crackdown

The judge mentioned the possibility that Biden could be charged as having acted as a lobbyist for foreign governments without registering with the Justice Department.

Three weeks later, after the deal collapsed, Weiss dropped the tax charges and indicated in a court filing that new charges would be brought in other states.

And on Wednesday he told the Delaware court that Biden would be charged in the gun case, which could bring up to 10 years in prison.

The legal troubles of Biden, 53, a Yale-trained lawyer and lobbyist, have cast a shadow over his father’s re-election campaign. Without offering any evidence, Republicans have accused Biden’s Justice Department of protecting his son and have accused Weiss, a Republican appointee, of going easy on Hunter.