The three-count federal indictment filed in Delaware says Biden lied about his drug use when he bought a firearm in October of 2018 while struggling with addiction to crack cocaine. More specifically, Biden is charged with two counts of making false statements by checking a box on the federal gun purchase form by falsely saying he was not a user of or addicted to drugs and was illegally possessing the gun as a drug user. He faces a third count for possessing the gun, a .38 caliber revolver, as a drug user.
Firearms Transaction Record, or Form 4473, is a lengthy ATF document that is filled out when attempting to purchase a firearm from a licensed gun dealer.
Mike Hammond, legislative counsel at Gun Owners of America, tells AFN those are not “minor” charges in the indictment that can be ignored.
“This is prohibited-person stuff,” the attorney advises. “This is a 'druggy' in possession of a firearm, so just not minor stuff.”
Biden faces a 25-year maximum sentence if convicted but Hammond predicts the son of the U.S. president will never see a jail cell.
"Joe Biden will pardon him. That's what I think," Hammond says.
Beyond making false statements on the Firearms Transaction Record, Hunter Biden’s actions later took several bizarre turns. According to a 2018 Politico story, his sister-in-law Hallie found the firearm in Hunter’s pickup and tossed it in a trash bin outside a grocery store in Wilmington. When Hunter went back to recovered the gun, it was gone and was never found.
Because the incident involved Hunter, eventually local police, FBI agents, and Secret Service agents arrived on the scene and investigated the missing firearm.
The gun owner of the store later told Politico he refused to give the ATF form to Secret Service agents who appeared in his store and demanded it. Hunter Biden was not being protected by the Secret Service at the time, the 2018 story said.
On the issue of firearms laws, Hammond says Gun Owners opposes some of the stiff penalties for lying on the ATF form but, in the case of Biden, the gun-rights attorney feels differently considering Joe Biden’s attack on 2nd Amendment rights.
“It gives us some satisfaction,” he tells AFN, “that the Biden family is getting a taste of its own medicine."
