Hunter in the dock: the gun, the taxes and the deal that blew up

Under the June 2023 agreements, Hunter would plead guilty to two misdemeanors for failing to pay taxes for 2017 and 2018, and the gun charge would be dropped if he spent two years off drugs and alcohol and gave up firearms. Republicans called it a sweetheart deal; Trump called it a “traffic ticket.” [1]

At the 26 July hearing Judge Maryellen Noreika asked who the immunity in the gun agreement protected and what it covered. Hunter’s lawyer said it barred future charges over his foreign business; the prosecutor said it did not, and that the investigation, including possible foreign-agent charges, was continuing. With no meeting of the minds, Hunter pleaded not guilty. Afterward the two sides fought over whether the diversion agreement had ever taken effect. [2][3]

Weiss asked to be made special counsel, and Attorney General Merrick Garland did so on 11 August 2023. In April 2024 Noreika rejected Hunter’s argument that the appointment was unlawful. [4][5]

On 12 October 2018, at a Wilmington gun shop, Hunter bought a Colt Cobra .38 revolver, a speed loader and hollow-point rounds, and answered “No” on ATF Form 4473 to the question of whether he was “an unlawful user of, or addicted to” any controlled substance. His own memoir describes smoking crack “every fifteen minutes, seven days a week” in 2018. [1]

Eleven days later his girlfriend at the time, Hallie Biden, the widow of his brother Beau, found the gun in his unlocked truck, alongside crack cocaine, and threw it in a trash can at a nearby supermarket, where a man looking for recyclables found it. [1]

On 11 June 2024 a Delaware jury convicted him of all three counts: two for lying on the form and one for possessing the gun as a drug user. The pardon ended the case before sentencing. [2][3]

Weiss’s tax indictment said Hunter earned more than $7 million from 2016 to 2020, much of it from Burisma and the CEFC venture, and failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes for 2016 to 2019. Instead, in the report’s words, he spent the money on “drugs, escorts, luxury hotels, and exotic cars,” and when he did file he deducted personal items, including clothing and escort services, as business expenses. The back taxes were eventually paid, largely with loans from his friend and lawyer Kevin Morris. [1]

On 5 September 2024, as jury selection began in Los Angeles, Hunter first offered an Alford plea, which would have let him plead guilty while maintaining his innocence. Prosecutors objected, and that afternoon he pleaded guilty to all nine counts, three felonies and six misdemeanors, with no plea agreement. He said he did it to spare his family a trial. [2][3]