Hunter Biden found guilty on all counts in gun case

A federal jury has convicted Hunter Biden on all three federal felony gun charges he faced, concluding that he violated laws meant to prevent drug addicts from owning firearms.

The conviction marks the first time a president’s immediate family member has been found guilty of a crime during their father’s term in office, though his crimes predate Joe Biden’s tenure as president.

The jury, which deliberated for just under three hours, returned guilty verdicts on all three charges, which stemmed from a revolver Hunter Biden bought in October 2018 at a Delaware gun shop.

Here's what we know:

• The charges: The first two counts were for lying about his drug use on a federal background check form, and the third count was for possessing a gun while addicted to, or using, illegal drugs. The judge said sentencing is usually set for 120 days following a verdict. Hunter Biden could face up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $750,000 at sentencing, though he likely will receive far less as a first-time offender. 
• Hunter Biden: Following the verdict, Hunter Biden said he is “more grateful for the love and support” of his family than he is “disappointed by the outcome.” His attorney, Abbe Lowell, said they would continue to “vigorously pursue all the legal challenges available to Hunter.”
• Joe Biden: In a statement, the president reiterated his role as a father seeking to support his son after the conviction. "As I said last week, I am the President, but I am also a Dad. Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today," he said.
• David Weiss: The special counsel said the case was “not just about addiction” but about the “illegal choices” Hunter Biden made while he was using drugs. He reiterated that no one is above the law, even the president's son. Weiss thanked the jury, prosecutors and the US attorney general.
• Inside the deliberation room: When deliberations first began Monday afternoon, the jury was split, according to one juror who spoke to CNN. After discussing the elements of each crime, they were ready to return a unanimous verdict Tuesday, the juror said. Three jurors who spoke to CNN said they believed they had no choice but to find Hunter Biden guilty, but one said the case “seemed like a waste of taxpayer dollars."
• What else jurors said: One juror told CNN, "I really don’t think that Hunter belongs in jail." The juror said they were mainly focused on evidence, not Hunter Biden's lifestyle, adding that politics did not come up. The man said the jurors felt bad that Naomi Biden, Hunter’s daughter, was called to testify. He said, in his opinion, it was a mistake to put her on the stand.

President Joe Biden hugged his son Hunter Biden after the president landed at the Delaware Air National Guard base on Tuesday.

The embrace came hours after a jury found Hunter Biden guilty of all three federal felony gun charges he faced, concluding that he violated laws meant to prevent drug addicts from owning firearms.

After the plane landed, video showed Hunter Biden, his son Beau and his wife Melissa walking across the tarmac to greet the president.

The headline and post were updated with more details.

Senate Republicans uniformly said Tuesday that the guilty verdict in the Hunter Biden gun case shows the justice system worked and they brushed away questions that the conviction shows that GOP claims of selective prosecution are politically motivated. 

Here's what some senators told CNN:

Sen. John Thune: “Hunter Biden's not running for any political office. Donald Trump's running for president. There are all kinds of different dynamics in two totally different cases,” he said. “The clear thing in the (Trump) New York case, I mean, there's no argument. ... This is politically motivated. The prosecutor ran, he got up there, got the job on the predicate of trying to prosecute the former president.”

Sen. Rick Scott: "First, in this case, this is existing law that people have been prosecuted before and they've been connected before, and they've been sentenced before," he said. "In the case of (Donald) Trump, they've made up something brand new that nobody's been prosecuted before. And it was complete political persecution."

"No one's ever been persecuted the way Trump was persecuted in New York. No one. No one in this country," he said.

Sen. Josh Hawley: "Let's remember that DOJ initially wanted to do a plea bargain (with Hunter Biden), had a plea bargain with him, as sort of a sweetheart deal and did not want to prosecute this case. I mean, so I think it exposes the fact that DOJ was ready to sweep this under the rug," the Missouri lawmaker said. "And as it turns out, it was a slam dunk case, which, by the way, is nothing to celebrate. I mean, it's like it's not, it's not a good thing that he's guilty."

With contributions from CNN's Sam Fossum, Manu Raju and Kristin Wilson

A juror told CNN that the jury mainly focused on evidence, not Hunter Biden's lifestyle, during deliberations in his trial on federal gun charges.

Juror 10 said he felt sad about how Hunter Biden's life had turned out, even though it wasn't discussed in detail.

"It was very sad ... not that he was being convicted of these crimes, but that his life had turned out the way it did," the juror said.

The juror said he based his decision on the fact that Hunter Biden did not disclose that he was a drug addict when he bought the gun.

“When you look at that form, ‘Are you a drug addict, are you an unlawful user of drugs,’ and he said no,” the juror said quoting the ATF form Hunter Biden was convicted of lying on. “Clearly, he lied.”

Jurors thoroughly discussed each legal standard that needed to be met by prosecutors to find Hunter Biden guilty, they finally concluded that he was guilty, he said.

“Hunter did get a fair trial,” the juror said, adding that the Biden family was "not at all" discussed during deliberations.

"We didn't use Jill. We didn't use President Biden," he said. The president's "name was only brought up once during the trial."

This post was updated with additional comments from the juror.

In a fairly dense Wall Street Journal op-ed, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell argued that special counsels are giving away too much power in the judiciary by transferring power to bureaucrats and decentralizing it from those who should have responsibility like Attorney General Merrick Garland.

As an example, McConnell appears to criticize the use of special counsels under Garland.

“This misbegotten trust in bureaucrats also undermines democratic legitimacy in the executive branch. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed three different 'special counsels' who operate outside the normal chain of command at the Justice Department to ensure prosecutorial 'independence,'" McConnell wrote.

The minority leader continued that he doesn't "doubt Mr. Garland’s sincerity that moving prosecutors outside the chain of command makes them 'independent.' The problem is the underlying assumption that prosecutors should be independent at all. Such an arrangement insulates them from democratic accountability."

He said, “What gives federal prosecution legitimacy is that it is vested in an elected branch of government.”

Meanwhile, the New York City Department of Probation officials have questioned former President Donald Trump about an additional gun that had been registered to him in New York and his access to firearms as part of their pre-sentencing interview, a city official briefed on the exchange said.

The former president was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records at the end of last month. Possession of firearms or ammunition by a convicted felon is a federal crime.

According to the official, Trump said that there was a gun in Florida, which is believed to be one of the three weapons listed on his New York City permit to carry concealed weapons. 

CNN has previously reported that two of the three pistols he was licensed to carry were turned over to the NYPD on March 31, 2023, and a third gun listed on Trump’s license “was lawfully moved to Florida." Contacted by CNN last week, Palm Beach police said that they were unaware of any gun that Trump might have and that none had been turned over to the department since his felony conviction. 

Trump’s New York gun license was suspended after his arrest in 2023 by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office and, now as a result of his conviction, his license is being revoked, according to New York City Police. A New York official briefed on the probation investigation said the information on the outstanding gun “will be referred to local authorities in Florida to take whatever steps are necessary."

CNN has asked representatives for Trump about the status of the gun. 

Progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez attacked Republicans after the Hunter Biden guilty verdict and said that President Joe Biden's handling of the case "shows the difference" between the two parties. 

"What would Republicans point to as a two-tiered system of justice when the president's son was just convicted of a crime? I mean, if anything, this shows the difference that Democrats are willing to accept when our justice system works as functions," she told CNN.
"We're not here contesting results. We're not here trying to defund the FBI or the Department of Justice because we don't like the outcome of a given trial. We respect the judicial process. We respect the outcome of it. And Hunter Biden, like Donald Trump, was convicted by a jury of his peers."

Asked if she was concerned the guilty verdict would hurt the president, Ocasio-Cortez said: "I don't think so. Because the president is not weaponizing" and abusing his power, instead he is "respecting the judicial system as it's working and is accepting the outcome of the trial."

House Republicans and Democrats debated Tuesday whether Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict on federal gun charges could be compared to former President Donald Trump’s conviction in his hush money trial.

During a House Rules Committee meeting Tuesday, Democrats said they respect the verdict and the rule of law, while Republicans argued the two cases could not be compared equally.

GOP Rep. Harriet Hageman of Wyoming argued that because the judge overseeing Trump’s trial was “handpicked” and expert witnesses were excluded from testifying, there were “clear differences” between the two cases.

GOP Rep. Austin Scott of Georgia argued the jury pool in Trump’s New York case was already stacked against the former president compared with the jury in Hunter Biden's case.

Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland contrasted how Democrats have been largely silent in the wake of Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict with how Republicans have mobilized to attack the Department of Justice after Trump’s conviction.

“Compare and contrast the difference in reaction between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Republicans are attacking our entire system of justice and the rule of law because they don’t like the way one case came out, whereas the son of the president of the United States is prosecuted and I don’t hear a single Democrat crying foul,” Raskin said.

CNN relied on a system of runners to get notes from reporters watching the Hunter Biden trial to the world in real-time. Here’s one runner’s description:

As a journalism student at the University of Delaware preparing for my final year of college before the real world, I jumped at the chance when one of my journalism professors sent me a text asking if I wanted to work for CNN.

There’s a very strict policy on electronics in the J. Caleb Boggs Federal Building that prohibits the usage of laptops and phones inside. This policy may have been a hassle, but I’m ultimately grateful for it, as it’s the reason I had a job during the trial.

My title of runner was extremely literal. I took notes from reporters in the courtroom and delivered them to a team of producers on the ground. This is how CNN and many other media outlets maintained live updates during the trial — it was thanks to runners like me.

Day after day, I was tasked with carrying notes bearing the latest national news up and down three flights of stairs, which was a tedious task when the trial was slow and an utterly invigorating one when it wasn’t.

By the end of the trial, I was on a first-name basis with nearly all of the security guards. It all paid off though when we finally got to the verdict, and I believe I may have sprinted faster than I ever had to get that note to our producers on the ground.

If all goes according to plan, this will be far from the last court case I cover, but I would call this a pretty solid first trial.