A six-year federal investigation into Hunter Biden will culminate this week as the president’s son faces trial for a second time.

He was convicted this summer on gun charges. Now he faces allegations of criminal tax evasion — and a judge has excluded one of his key lines of defense.

During the trial in Los Angeles — where jury selection is scheduled to start on Thursday — prosecutors plan to tell a story about greed, decadence and entitlement. Biden’s lawyers, meanwhile, will argue it’s actually a tale of addiction and redemption.

The political stakes of the trial, expected to last about two weeks, have lessened now that Joe Biden is no longer running for reelection. But evidence in the case is expected to highlight his son’s foreign business dealings — an issue that became a centerpiece of Republican attacks on the Biden family.

The trial also will revisit the younger Biden’s past struggles with drug abuse. Prosecutors intend to argue that, while he was dodging his taxes, Biden was spending lavishly on drugs, strip clubs, sports cars and other trappings of a lifestyle filled with partying. Some of the details of his drug addiction emerged during the gun trial three months ago, and reliving them has been a source of pain to the president and the rest of the Biden family.

In the courtroom, Biden’s defense lawyers may face an uphill battle. The judge overseeing the trial, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi, has issued a series of pretrial rulings unfavorable to the defense. Perhaps most critically, Biden wanted to tell jurors that, after he got sober, he belatedly paid all the taxes he owed. But Scarsi has blocked the defense team from making that argument.

The president said in June that he would not pardon his son or commute an eventual prison sentence. Biden is scheduled to be sentenced in November in the gun case, where federal sentencing guidelines recommend up to 21 months in prison. If he is convicted in the tax case, he could face up to 17 years in prison, according to the Justice Department.

Here’s how we got here and what to expect.

The allegations against the president’s son

Federal prosecutors led by special counsel David Weiss, who also brought the gun case, have charged Biden with three tax felonies and six tax misdemeanors. The charges include evading a tax assessment, filing a false tax return and failing to file and pay taxes.

In a 56-page indictment, prosecutors said that he intentionally avoided paying $1.4 million in taxes he owed for tax years 2016 through 2019. During that time, prosecutors say, Biden earned more than $7 million, including for work with the controversial Ukrainian energy firm Burisma Holdings Limited, a now-bankrupt Chinese energy company, and a Romanian oligarch facing bribery allegations.

Also during that time, Biden was grappling with addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine and grieving the 2015 death of his brother, Beau. In his memoir, Beautiful Things, Biden described partying with drug dealers and strippers at a series of Los Angeles hotels and Airbnbs in the spring and summer of 2018. But when he worked with an accountant to settle his tax affairs in 2020, he allegedly identified some of those hotel stays as business expenses — resulting in a tax write-off.

He also claimed that a $1,248 payment to fly a stripper from LA to New York was a business expense, as was a payment of $3,852 to rent a Lamborghini, according to prosecutors.

His lawyers have argued his addiction hamstrung his ability to manage his personal affairs, including his taxes. They wanted to introduce an expert witness to testify about the link between trauma and addiction. But prosecutors asked Scarsi to block that person from testifying, and the judge did so.

Prosecutors also retort that Biden’s addiction wasn’t so debilitating as to keep him from earning millions of dollars. And, they argue, if he was capable of making and spending all that money, he was also capable of paying taxes.

How investigators built their case

The federal probe of Biden stretches back to late 2018, when an IRS agent began investigating him for apparent financial crimes, according to congressional testimony.

As his father was preparing to challenge Donald Trump in the 2020 election, IRS and FBI agents drilled down on Biden’s finances. The probe, which had not yet become public, found a home base in the office of Weiss, the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney in Delaware.

As the investigation proceeded in secret, Trump urged the Ukrainian government to open its own investigation of Biden, citing his presence on the board of Burisma, the scandal-dogged Ukrainian energy conglomerate. Trump’s pressure campaign, which included thinly veiled threats to withhold military aid if Ukraine didn’t publicly announce a probe, led to Trump’s first impeachment.

In December 2020, a few weeks after his father defeated Trump in the presidential election, the Biden investigation became public. Biden confirmed on Dec. 9, 2020, that the feds were investigating his tax affairs. But Weiss’ probe eventually expanded to include other matters, including Biden’s purchase of a handgun in 2018 during a period when he was frequently using crack cocaine.

Two and a half years later, prosecutors announced they had reached an agreement with Biden to resolve the allegations of tax and gun crimes: Biden would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and receive a deal related to the gun that was intended to ultimately result in charges being withdrawn. Biden would also get protection from future potential charges. But after a judge questioned its details at a hearing in July 2023, the plea deal fell apart.

Just a few weeks later, Attorney General Merrick Garland named Weiss a special counsel, empowering him to bring criminal cases anywhere in the country. Later that year, Weiss secured two indictments of Biden: one in Delaware for owning a gun as a drug user and lying about his drug use on a gun-purchase form; the other in California on the tax allegations.

The gun case went to trial in June. It showcased the destruction caused by Biden’s addiction, including with testimony from his ex-wife, Kathleen Buhle. His brother’s widow, Hallie Biden, also testified that he introduced her to crack cocaine and that she became addicted to the drug. First Lady Jill Biden and numerous other members of the president’s family attended much of the trial. A jury convicted him on all charges, and he is set to be sentenced on Nov. 13.

Key defenses taken off the table

In the tax case, Biden’s main lines of defense have been twofold: first, that he was debilitated by his addiction when he allegedly committed the tax crimes, and second, that after he got sober, he paid off his tax debt with penalties and interest.

Biden’s lawyers said in court filings that they wanted to cite the belated payment of his tax debt to undermine prosecutors’ argument that he willfully failed to pay. But Scarsi wasn’t convinced, and on Aug. 27 granted prosecutors’ motion to bar Biden from citing the payment.

“In tax cases, courts routinely exclude evidence that a defendant untimely filed tax returns or untimely paid outstanding tax debts,” he wrote.

That ruling wasn’t the Biden team’s first difficult episode with the judge, a Trump appointee and former patent lawyer. Earlier in the summer, they tried to have the case thrown out, citing Judge Aileen Cannon’s ruling in the Florida-based prosecution of Trump by special counsel Jack Smith. Cannon ruled that Smith’s appointment as a special counsel was unconstitutional, and Biden’s legal team, helmed by Mark Geragos and Abbe Lowell, made a similar argument. In doing so, they wrote that Weiss waited until he became a special counsel to bring criminal charges against Biden.

But, without prompting from prosecutors, Scarsi threatened to sanction Biden’s lawyers for making false statements. The noted that Biden had faced criminal charges before Weiss was made special counsel — namely, in court documents filed in Delaware as part of the failed 2023 plea deal.

“This Court has little tolerance for lack of candor from counsel,” Scarsi wrote in a document ordering Biden’s lawyers to show why they shouldn’t be punished for lying.

In their response, Biden’s lawyers said that they “never tried to mislead the Court,” that their wording was inartful and that they should have said Weiss waited until he was made special counsel to bring “indictments,” rather than “charges.”

Scarsi replied that he doubted “the veracity of that explanation,” because changing the word “charges” to “indictments” wouldn’t have made sense. But, acknowledging that Geragos was new to the Biden case, he said he wouldn’t order sanctions.

Ultimately, Scarsi rejected the defense’s constitutional argument that the case should be tossed.

New allegations of influence peddling

In another unwelcome development for the president’s son, prosecutors revealed in pretrial skirmishes that they have evidence indicating that Biden agreed to lobby the U.S. government for Romanian oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu.

Biden’s team had moved to block the prosecutors from introducing evidence of alleged corruption, and prosecutors replied that they plan to call one of Biden’s former business associates as a witness. That person — unnamed in court papers — is expected to testify that, while Biden’s father was vice president, Popoviciu looked to hire Biden to get the U.S. government to investigate Romanian authorities who were investigating the Romanian. But Biden worried that lobbying would damage his father’s political career. So instead, prosecutors say, his associate signed a deal with Popoviciu to provide real estate management services — when, in fact, Popoviciu knew the associate would funnel money from that deal to Biden and expected Biden to lobby the U.S. government for him. That deal resulted in a $3.1 million payment to the associate, who passed on roughly a third of it to Biden, according to prosecutors.

Prosecutors added that Biden also worked with CEFC China (a Chinese energy conglomerate) and Burisma. But, they emphasized, they are not charging him with illegal lobbying.

“Rather,” they wrote, “the evidence will show the defendant performed almost no work in exchange for the millions of dollars he received from these entities.”

The court filing about Popoviciu, made public less than three weeks after the president bowed out of the 2024 campaign, showed just how bruising the trial could have been for Biden’s reelection campaign. It was the first public statement from the Justice Department alleging that the younger Biden made money — around $1 million — from a client who was led to believe that the then-vice president’s son would work to shape U.S. government policy on his behalf.

Painful personal details

Beyond their focus on Biden’s finances, prosecutors also plan to highlight episodes that have been painful and embarrassing for the Biden family.

Lunden Roberts, an Arkansas woman who is the mother of one of Biden’s children, is under subpoena and is expected to testify next week, according to her lawyer. Biden initially disputed that he was the child’s father, and the president did not publicly acknowledge the grandchild until last year, when she was 4. Roberts sought child support in court, and those proceedings delved into how Biden managed his finances, including his tax affairs.

Hallie Biden, Beau’s widow, was also subpoenaed to testify and was granted immunity. Her sister, Elizabeth Secundy, has been subpoenaed and granted immunity as well. Prosecutors have not revealed any significant detail about the women’s anticipated testimony. But congressional Republicans have said they obtained financial documents showing Biden paid tens of thousands of dollars to both of them.

And a court filing on Aug. 29 indicated that Biden’s sexual history could also be a focus. The document listed names and entities that prosecutors and defense lawyers believe could come up in the trial so that the court stenographer could confirm their spellings. The list included a strip club, a members-only sex club, the sex club’s founder, and an entity called “Emerald Fantasy Girls.” It also named two lawyers who have helped Biden’s ex-wife navigate her divorce. One of those lawyers previously wrote that Biden’s profligate spending, including on prostitutes, drugs and alcohol, created financial hardship for the family.

Biden has said he got sober in the summer of 2019. He has remarried and has a young son, and he credits his sobriety to his wife and family.

“What I’ve been through — what I’ve done — is something I can never purge, never forget,” he wrote in his memoir. “But I’m learning to live in the moment without constantly feeling guilt or shame.”

The Justice Department has seized more than 30 web domains that it said were part of a broader, ongoing, surreptitious effort by the Russian government to influence the 2024 U.S. election and American public opinion, federal authorities announced Wednesday.

The seized sites were linked to a Russian campaign known as “Doppelganger,” one of the most prolific and public campaigns spreading disinformation linked to Moscow in recent years. Experts recently saw evidence of the campaign spreading Russian disinformation related to the failed assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, and the Biden administration has worked to counter the campaign's efforts in recent months.

The legal actions, which also included the indictment of two Russian employees of the Kremlin-backed media outlet RT, underscored previous warnings this year by the Biden administration that foreign adversaries are looking to interfere in the upcoming vote. The new details about the Russian efforts are likely to increase concerns about continuing interference by foreign governments as the U.S. presidential campaign enters its final stretch.

“The Justice Department's message is clear: We have no tolerance for attempts by authoritarian regimes to exploit our democratic system of government,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a press conference announcing the crackdown.

Russia has targeted American elections with disinformation for years, most notably during the 2016 presidential campaign, when Russia was linked to disinformation campaigns designed to sway the vote toward Trump. In response to a reporter’s question, Garland said the Kremlin’s aim has not changed.

FBI Director Christopher Wray said he hopes the countermeasures against the Russian propaganda drive will deter other U.S. adversaries, such as China and Iran, from meddling in the election.

“Knock it off,” Wray said.

Garland added: “We will be relentlessly aggressive in countering and disrupting attempts by Russia and Iran, as well as China or any other foreign malign actor to interfere in our elections and undermine our democracy.”

The 32 seized websites used domain names similar to those for prominent U.S. news sources like The Washington Post and Fox News, but directed unwitting readers to Russian-produced content that typically fueled Russian-government narratives or sought to foment division in the U.S., Garland said. Some were explicitly focused on the upcoming U.S. election, officials said.

“They were fake sites,” Garland said. “They were filled with Russian government propaganda that had been created by the Kremlin to reduce international support for Ukraine, bolster pro-Russian policies and interests and influence voters in the United States and in other countries.”

In addition, the State Department on Wednesday announced it is cracking down on operations of RT’s parent company Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiary companies, and would be instituting a new visa restriction policy aimed at these groups. It also announced a $10 million reward for information on individuals involved in RT-linked Russian hacking group RaHDit.

The Treasury Department took further steps against the RaHDit group, sanctioning almost a dozen individuals linked to the group, including Aleksey Alekseyevich Garashchenko, a former Russian intelligence official who leads the group. In addition, top figures at RT were sanctioned, including RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan.

The Russians dubbed a campaign to influence the U.S. elections in 2024 as “The Good Old U.S.A. Project,” according to a planning document the FBI said it obtained and included in a court filing supporting the seizure. The project’s organizers developed messaging for voters in six swing states, and aimed to use targeted social media advertising to track its impact. A key message of the project, according to the affidavit: “that the US should target their effort towards addressing its domestic issues instead of wasting money in Ukraine and other ‘problem’ regions.”

In addition to the “Doppelganger” domains, the project established look-alike pages on Facebook for major western news outlets, using names like “CNN California” and “California BBC,” U.S. officials said.

The Justice Department alleged that Sergei Vladilenovich Kiriyenko was behind the effort. Kiriyenko is the former prime minister of Russia, and currently is a top official in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration, playing a leading role in administering seized Ukrainian territory.

Garland called Kiriyenko a member of Putin’s “inner circle.”

This is not the first foreign interference effort aimed at U.S. elections this year. The announcement came weeks after the Iranian government was linked to a hack and leak operation against the Trump presidential campaign, and after similar targeting of the campaigns of President Joe Biden and of Vice President Kamala Harris was disclosed. On Tuesday night, the accounts of members of Trump’s family on social media platform X were also compromised. 

“Russia is not the only foreign power trying to interfere in our elections,” Garland said. “We have observed increasingly aggressive Iranian activity in this election cycle.”

The Justice Department also announced criminal charges against two Russians, Kostiantyn Kalashnikov and Elena Afanasyeva, accused them of continuing to covertly distribute media sponsored by RT in the U.S. even after that outlet formally shut down its U.S. operations following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. That campaign involved placing videos on TikTok, Instagram, X and YouTube, prosecutors said.

An indictment unsealed Wednesday in federal court in Manhattan charges the two Russians with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act and money laundering.

“While the views expressed in the videos are not uniform, the subject matter and content of the videos are often consistent with the Government of Russia' s interest in amplifying U.S. domestic divisions in order to weaken U.S. opposition to core Government of Russia interests, such as its ongoing war in Ukraine,” the indictment says.

The nation’s top gun control groups are awkwardly avoiding talking about Hunter Biden’s gun conviction — and his widely expected appeal on Second Amendment grounds.

In the day since President Joe Biden’s son was found guilty of owning a gun while being a drug user and lying about his drug use on a purchase form, POLITICO asked seven top gun control groups how they are navigating the verdict and likely appeal. Several advocates were asked directly if they believe — as the president’s son argues — that it is unconstitutional to ban drug users from possessing guns.

Not a single one commented on the case or the broader legal question, underscoring how uncomfortable the politics around the case are for the gun control groups pushing hard for Biden’s reelection.

“That’s all about politics,” said a gun violence prevention activist, granted anonymity due to the political sensitivities. “This is just: ‘No, we’re not going to get in the middle of this shitstorm. Nothing good can come of it.’”

The tension was never more apparent than on Tuesday, when just hours after Hunter Biden was found guilty on three felony counts stemming from his 2018 purchase of a handgun, the president delivered remarks at a high-profile event for Everytown for Gun Safety to mark national gun violence prevention month.

His son’s lawyers tried, to no avail, to have the charges thrown out before trial on Second Amendment grounds, and they are virtually certain to renew that argument when they appeal the conviction. They are trying to harness recent court rulings, led by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority, that have taken an increasingly expansive view of gun rights.

The president, in his remarks Tuesday, did not mention his son. Instead he touted progress stemming from historic gun legislation he helped pass and a drop in crime, while reiterating previous comments that the Second Amendment does not mean anyone can own a gun no matter what.

“There’s never been a time that says you can own anything you want,” the president said, speaking at Everytown’s Gun Sense University convening at the Washington Hilton.

The movement for tighter gun laws has seen substantive policy success under the Biden administration, progress attributable both to the shift in politics around the issue but also the president’s personal interest in combating the gun violence crisis. A coalition of major gun control groups threw their support behind Biden’s reelect last fall, calling him and Vice President Kamala Harris the “strongest champions for gun violence prevention to ever take residence in the White House.”

The Biden administration has issued numerous executive actions restricting the purchase and possession of guns and worked with Congress to pass the first gun-related law in nearly three decades. That law toughened background checks for young gun buyers, helped states implement red flag laws and kept firearms from a wider swath of domestic violence offenders. He also launched the first-ever federal office of gun violence prevention, while making moves to further expand background checks. And on Tuesday, he reiterated his calls for additional restrictions, including a federal ban on assault weapons.

His campaign sees the issue as a fruitful one — both as a way to energize base voters and court suburban independent women. It’s a messaging strategy that clashes with his son’s legal advocacy for a broader view of the Second Amendment.

The centerpiece of the three felony counts that Hunter Biden was convicted of is a longstanding provision of the federal Gun Control Act that bars people from having guns if they are users of, or addicted to, “any controlled substance.” But the constitutionality of that law has been part of the swirl of legal questions surrounding gun restrictions since 2022, when the Supreme Court announced a new approach to the Second Amendment in a landmark case known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen. 

In that decision, the court said restrictions on gun purchases are valid only if they are consistent with gun laws that existed at the nation’s founding — a decision that both gun control groups and the president decried. Bruen spawned a slew of conflicting lower-court rulings about how closely today’s gun laws, including the drug-users prohibition, must mirror those from the late 1700s.

In reaction to the Bruen ruling, the president issued a statement saying he was “deeply disappointed” and that it “contradicts both common sense and the Constitution.” He added that the “Second Amendment is not absolute,” language that is a staple of his messaging around guns.

But the president’s son relied heavily on Bruen in seeking to have his charges tossed out before trial.

“Gun control is a politically charged topic,” his lawyers wrote last December. But the drug-users prohibition in the Gun Control Act is “indefensible under the Bruen framework” and must be struck down as unconstitutional, they argued.

Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Donald Trump appointee who oversaw the trial, rejected Hunter Biden’s bid to have the provision struck down wholesale. Shortly before the trial, he mounted a modified effort for a judge-ordered acquittal on Second Amendment grounds. Noreika has not yet ruled on that long-shot motion.

Hunter Biden’s best chance of success for his constitutional argument will be on appeal, where he is virtually certain to ask higher courts — including, perhaps, the Supreme Court — to declare the drug-users prohibition unconstitutional and to set aside his conviction.

Meanwhile, his team is closely watching for a Supreme Court ruling, expected by the end of this month, in another high-stakes gun rights case, United States v. Rahimi. The defendant, Zackey Rahimi, was convicted of illegally possessing a gun while under a domestic violence restraining order. He has argued that the ban is unconstitutional on similar history-based grounds that Hunter Biden and others have used to challenge the drug-users prohibition.

A ruling in favor of Rahimi would be a boon for Hunter Biden. It would be another sign of the high court’s radically expansive view of gun rights, and it would portend that the drug-user prohibition may be the next gun control measure to fall. But such a ruling would also draw horror and condemnation from the president — once again pitting the White House’s policy positions against the president’s son’s legal defense.

“This is such a frenzied time for gun law, and we may know as soon as tomorrow what the Supreme Court has to say about at least one of the violations he was convicted of. And so I think a lot of people are anxious to see how Rahimi turns out and whether or not it gives clarity to the application of Bruen,” said Thomas Chittum, the former associate deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and now a law professor who teaches a course on the Second Amendment.

Second Amendment advocates have been much more vocal on the conviction than their restrictionist opponents. The National Rifle Association issued a statement obliquely praising the conviction.

“The National Rifle Association has always stood for the lawful use and possession of firearms. Mr. Biden’s documented lifestyle choices at the time of purchasing a firearm made him a prohibited person under current law,” said Randy Kozuch, executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action, in a statement to POLITICO. The NRA did not respond to a follow-up question on whether the organization believes the Second Amendment allows for bans on drug users from having guns.

Other gun rights organizations used the verdict to bolster their push for looser gun laws. The Firearms Policy Coalition reiterated an offer to aid Hunter Biden in his challenge.

“Countless lives are destroyed every year under the federal government’s unconstitutional and immoral regulations. We proudly work to eliminate these laws and create a free world. Just as we have in many other cases, we stand ready to assist Mr. Biden in his challenge of federal gun laws,” said FPC President Brandon Combs.

WILMINGTON, Delaware — Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, was found guilty Tuesday of three felony charges stemming from his purchase of a handgun in 2018.

Biden, 54, is the first child of a sitting U.S. president ever to be convicted in a criminal trial. The president said last week that he would not pardon his son.

The jury of six men and six women issued its unanimous verdict after three hours of deliberations.

Biden remained perfectly still as a court clerk read the verdict aloud. Before leaving the courtroom, he hugged his lawyers and kissed his wife, Melissa Cohen Biden. He and his wife, along with first lady Jill Biden, departed from the courthouse a few minutes later in Secret Service SUVs.

Biden faces a maximum prison sentence of 25 years but is much more likely to receive two years or less — or even no prison time at all, because he is a first-time offender and the crimes involved only a single gun that was never used violently. Judge Maryellen Noreika, who oversaw the trial, will determine the sentence. She said she expects to conduct sentencing in about four months.

Biden also faces federal criminal charges for allegedly failing to pay more than $1.4 million in taxes on time. A trial in that case is scheduled to begin in September in Los Angeles. Special counsel David Weiss brought both the gun case and the tax case after years of investigating the president’s son.

Speaking to reporters after the verdict, Weiss defended the prosecution and hinted that his team won’t seek a severe sentence.

No one is above the law, Weiss said. "However, Hunter Biden should be no more accountable than any other citizen convicted of this same conduct. The prosecution has been and will continue to be committed to this principle."

Weiss was originally appointed as Delaware’s top federal prosecutor by Donald Trump and was later made a special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

The gun-related charges spawned from Biden’s purchase of a Colt revolver at a Wilmington gun shop in October of 2018. At the time, prosecutors said, Biden was in the throes of addiction to crack cocaine. Prosecutors alleged that he signed paperwork at the time of the purchase falsely claiming he did not use illegal drugs. It is illegal for drug users to possess guns, and it is illegal to lie on gun-purchasing forms.

Prosecutors said Biden possessed the gun for 11 days before his brother’s widow, Hallie Biden, found it and threw it in a trash can outside a high-end grocery store. A man who scavenges through trash cans for recyclables then found the gun and later provided it to police.

Biden is sure to appeal the conviction. In pretrial motions, his lawyers contended that the federal law barring drug users from having guns is unconstitutional under the Supreme Court’s increasingly expansive view of the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Noreika, a Trump appointee, rejected the constitutional argument, but Biden’s team is expected to raise it again on appeal.

Biden's lawyers also filed motions during the trial asking Noreika to toss out the charges based on a lack of proof. Those motions, which are rarely granted, remain pending.

The trial began on June 3. Among the witnesses called by prosecutors were three of Biden’s former romantic partners, all of whom testified about his frequent drug use in 2018.

The trial reached its emotional apex on Friday, when one of Biden’s daughters, Naomi Biden, took the stand for the defense to testify about his condition around the time that he bought the gun. She said she saw him in New York shortly after the date he bought the gun, and that he seemed to be doing well.

But during cross-examination, prosecutor Leo Wise confronted her with text messages she exchanged with her father when he was in the city. In one exchange, he texted her around midnight and again around 2 a.m., seeking to retrieve a borrowed truck. In another exchange, she told her father, “I’m really sorry, Dad. I just can’t take this.”

When she texted her father that she missed him and wanted to see him, he apologized for being “unreachable.”

Hunter Biden declined to testify in his own defense.

After the verdict, Biden said in a statement: “I am more grateful today for the love and support I experienced this last week from Melissa, my family, my friends, and my community than I am disappointed by the outcome. Recovery is possible by the grace of God, and I am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time.”

His lead attorney, Abbe Lowell, expressed disappointment in the verdict. “We respect the jury process, and as we have done throughout this case, we will continue to vigorously pursue all the legal challenges available to Hunter,” Lowell said.

The conviction is sure to be a source of deep pain for the president, who has long worried about the impact of the case on his only surviving son. The president fears not only that his son may be incarcerated, but also that the case could imperil his sobriety.

“As I said last week, I am the President, but I am also a Dad,” the president said in a statement after the verdict. “Jill and I love our son, and we are so proud of the man he is today. So many families who have had loved ones battle addiction understand the feeling of pride seeing someone you love come out the other side and be so strong and resilient in recovery.”

“As I also said last week, I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal,” the president continued.

The verdict comes just weeks before the first presidential debate, scheduled for June 27. The president will face Trump, who is himself a newly convicted felon. It’s the latest episode of a campaign season that has become inextricably linked with the criminal justice system, though the Trump campaign was largely silent during the Biden trial after years of attacks on the president’s son.

Biden nearly avoided facing trials on both the gun charges and the tax charges. Last year, Weiss’ office and Biden’s legal team struck a tentative deal in which Biden would have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and submitted to drug testing and other monitoring. Under the deal, prosecutors would have deferred the gun charges and eventually dropped them if Biden remained out of trouble.

But the deal fell apart after Noreika asked questions about its details.

Biden’s lawyers have contended that Weiss — a federal prosecutor originally appointed by Trump — brought overly harsh charges in both cases as a result of pressure from Republicans.

Eugene Daniels contributed to this report.

WILMINGTON, Delaware — Hunter Biden’s criminal case on federal gun charges is now in the hands of a jury.

The panel of six men and six women deliberated for about an hour on Monday afternoon after hearing closing arguments from prosecutors and Biden’s defense team.

Jurors were dismissed for the day without reaching a verdict. They will resume deliberations Tuesday morning.

The president’s son faces three felony charges, brought by special counsel David Weiss, stemming from his purchase of a handgun in October 2018. Prosecutors have charged Biden with illegally possessing a gun as a drug user and lying on paperwork about his addiction to crack cocaine at the time of the purchase.

Near the start of his closing argument, prosecutor Leo Wise gestured to the crowd of people in the courtroom gallery, which included First Lady Jill Biden and other members of the Biden family.

“All of this is not evidence,” Wise told the jury. “The people sitting in the gallery are not evidence. … You may recognize some of them from the news or the community. … Respectfully, none of that matters.”

“No one is above the law,” Wise said.

He also referenced the extensive and painful evidence prosecutors provided of Biden’s addiction.

“To be clear, the evidence was personal, it was ugly and it was overwhelming,” he said.

One juror applied lip gloss during Wise’s opening statement. Another’s eyelids fluttered.

Biden’s lead defense lawyer, Abbe Lowell, faulted the prosecution for the reference to the publicity surrounding the case.

“How did they just begin their argument?” Lowell asked in his own closing argument. “With raising his mom or wife or sister or other relatives sitting in the courtroom.”

Lowell described the prosecutors’ allegations as based on “suspicion and conjecture.” He said prosecutors were “most unfair” and took statements out of context when, during the trial’s evidence phase, they played long audio excerpts from Biden’s memoir about his struggles with addiction.

“It’s time to end this case,” Lowell argued.

He accused prosecutors of using a “magician’s trick” to persuade jurors of Biden’s guilt — drawing attention to salacious evidence while hoping they wouldn’t notice the weakness of their arguments. Lowell gestured with his hands to mimic the alleged misdirection.

Most of the jurors appeared attentive, with one alternate sitting on the edge of her chair. But two jurors opened and closed their eyes very slowly. One of the two rested his head heavily in his hand. The other closed his eyes for periods of four seconds or longer.

Lowell criticized prosecutors for their unsparing cross-examination of Biden’s adult daughter Naomi, who testified Friday in her father’s defense. Their decision to ask her if she had ever used cocaine was a desperate move that highlighted the weakness of their case, Lowell argued.

“That’s reasonable doubt — and extraordinarily cruel to his daughter,” the defense lawyer said.

Prosecutor Derek Hines defended the questioning of Naomi Biden by offering a rather obvious retort.

“Who called the defendant’s daughter as a witness in this case? Not us,” Hines said.

In the prosecution’s final pitch to the jury, Hines said the evidence of Biden’s drug addiction during the period around the gun purchase — including photographs, text messages, statements in Biden’s memoir and testimony from his family members — was “overwhelming.”

“We proved that beyond a reasonable doubt seven ways to Sunday,” Hines said. “If this evidence did not establish that Hunter Biden is a crack addict or unlawful user, then no one is a crack addict or unlawful user.”

In addition to the first lady, other members of the Biden family attended the closing arguments, including Hunter Biden’s wife Melissa Cohen-Biden, his uncle James Biden and his half-sister Ashley Biden.

Some in the family grew emotional as the trial built to a conclusion. As the defense played aloud in the courtroom a recording of Biden reading a portion of his memoir, Ashley Biden began crying and later left the courtroom for a time.

“I hate recalling it,” Biden said in the audio recording, referring to his addiction. “I hate the damage it caused to me and others.”

Biden faces a maximum prison sentence of 25 years if convicted on all counts, but would likely receive much less prison time, if any.

Earlier on Monday, Biden’s defense team rested its case after Biden declined to testify in his own defense.

The trial began on June 3. Prosecutors spent four days last week presenting witnesses and evidence, including lengthy portions from the audio version of Biden’s memoir, which described his addiction in gut-wrenching detail.

They also called three women who had been in relationships with Biden: Kathleen Buhle, his ex-wife; Zoe Kestan, who was romantically involved with him in 2017 and 2018; and Hallie Biden, his brother’s widow, with whom he struck up a romance after his brother’s death in 2015. All three women shared details about his use of crack cocaine.

Prosecutors also called the gun store salesman said to have sold Biden the gun. He described helping Biden choose a revolver and watching him fill out a federal gun purchase form, including checking a box saying he did not use illegal drugs.

Biden’s defense team presented a brief case on Friday, calling three witnesses to testify for him. Two of them — the owner of the gun store and a former employee there — were not particularly friendly. Both described the process by which the gun store personnel handled his paperwork.

Lowell had wanted to show the jury evidence that the gun purchase form was altered several weeks after the sale, when someone belatedly added a line saying Biden used his vehicle registration as ID. But Judge Maryellen Noreika barred the defense from making that argument.

Still, by calling in two people who were at the gun store on the day of the sale, Lowell aimed to raise questions in jurors’ minds about how the purchase was handled. One of the witnesses indicated that something was wrong with the copy of the form shown during the trial, but could not elaborate after prosecutors objected.

Naomi Biden testified for the defense that she saw her father in New York in October of 2018, the month when he bought the gun, and said he seemed to be doing well. But prosecutors cast doubt on that characterization by showing her texts she exchanged with her father on that trip, including one in which he messaged her at 2 a.m. about meeting up, and another in which she wrote, “I’m really sorry dad I can’t take this.”

WILMINGTON, Delaware — Hunter Biden’s gun case will soon be in the hands of a jury, but first, he and his lawyers must make a crucial decision: whether he’ll take the stand in his own defense.

If he does, Biden could seek to win sympathy from jurors and persuade them that in October of 2018, when he purchased a handgun that led to the criminal charges in the case, he was in a period of sobriety and truly believed he was not a drug addict.

But testifying would also bring significant risk for the president’s son, as prosecutors have signaled that they would ask him both about his long struggles with addiction to crack cocaine and about his alleged failure to pay more than a million dollars in taxes on time.

Biden’s taxes are at the center of a separate criminal case, set for trial in September in Los Angeles. Special counsel David Weiss brought both cases.

For now, Biden's immediate legal jeopardy is the federal gun case in Delaware, where prosecutors have accused him of lying about his drug use on a gun-purchase form and illegally possessing a gun as a drug user. The three felony charges in the case carry a maximum total sentence of 25 years in prison, though Biden, if convicted, is unlikely to receive anywhere close to that amount.

Before court adjourned on Friday afternoon, Biden’s lead defense lawyer, Abbe Lowell, indicated that Biden and his team would decide over the weekend whether Biden will testify. Prosecutors rested their case on Friday, followed by a short presentation from the defense.

Over four days of testimony this week, the jury of six men and six women heard from members of the Biden family and other people who provided intimate — and at times stomach-churning — details of the president’s son’s difficult past. His ex-wife and two other former romantic partners testified for the prosecution about his drug use in 2018. And his daughter Naomi testified for the defense, offering an emotional account of how she felt optimistic about her father’s recovery around the time he bought the gun.

Biden has now been sober for years. But prosecutors have introduced text messages suggesting that he was still using crack during the critical period in October 2018. Lowell has argued that Biden had completed a treatment program just before that period and genuinely believed he was not addicted at the time — so indicating that he was not a drug user on the gun form would not have been a lie.

The jury has heard many of Biden’s own words during the trial, as prosecutors have played audio excerpts of him reading his own memoir about his struggles with addiction. But the jurors have not heard Biden’s own account of what happened in the small Wilmington gun shop on Oct. 12, 2018 — or his state of mind when he bought a Colt revolver.

If Biden chooses to take the stand, he will likely be the final witness before closing arguments, and then the jury will begin its deliberations. Lowell had planned to call James Biden, the defendant’s uncle (and the president’s brother), but he indicated on Friday that he had jettisoned that plan. It appears to have been a last-minute decision, as POLITICO spotted James Biden outside a Wilmington hotel shortly after defense lawyers revealed he would not testify.

Members of the Biden family have been in court throughout the week to support the president’s son, including — on various days — First Lady Jill Biden; Ashley Biden, his half-sister; Valerie Biden Owens, his aunt; John T. Owens, Valerie’s husband and his uncle; Peter Neal, his son-in-law and Naomi’s husband; Cuffe Biden Owens, his cousin; and Melissa Cohen-Biden, his wife.

WILMINGTON, Delaware — Naomi Biden, a daughter of Hunter Biden and a granddaughter of the president, took the stand at her father’s criminal trial on Friday, recounting in emotional testimony how she visited him while he was in a drug rehab program about six weeks before he bought the gun at the center of the case.

Naomi, 30, was called by the defense after prosecutors rested their case earlier in the day.

When the trial reconvenes on Monday, there is one more witness who might testify: Hunter himself. His lawyer indicated Friday afternoon that the defense team will decide over the weekend whether he will take the stand in his own defense before the case moves to closing arguments.

Naomi’s testimony was intended to strengthen the defense’s argument that Hunter could have been sober in October 2018, when he allegedly bought a Colt revolver and possessed it for 11 days.

But during cross-examination, prosecutors presented text messages that painted a different picture of Hunter’s life during the critical period.

Prosecutors led by special counsel David Weiss have charged the president's son with three felonies. They say that he lied on a federal gun purchase form by claiming he wasn’t using drugs and that he violated a federal law barring drug users from having guns.

Late in the summer of 2018, Naomi testified, her father asked her to visit him in rehab in California, where he was fighting an addiction to crack cocaine. She met him at a coffee shop in Los Angeles with his sober coach, then had lunch and went shopping.

“He seemed like the clearest I had seen him since my uncle died,” she said, referring to the 2015 death of Hunter's brother, Beau. “He just seemed really great.”

She later texted him that she was proud of him.

Naomi also testified that she met her father again in New York, in mid-October. She was living there at the time, and Hunter had driven to the city. She told defense lawyer Abbe Lowell that the meeting gave her hope. But prosecutor Leo Wise presented a series of text messages between Naomi and Hunter from the time of that visit. The texts showed that Hunter was uncommunicative and that Naomi was concerned about him.

In one text sent around 2 a.m., Hunter asked if he could pick up his truck — which Naomi and her boyfriend had borrowed — at a specific intersection. Naomi testified that she didn’t know what her father was doing at the time.

He still seemed good, she added. “I was hopeful.”

Wise then directed her to more texts. In one, she raised concern that she might not be able to see her father on his New York visit and sent an unhappy face.

“I'm really sorry, Dad, I can't take this,” she wrote, according to a copy of the text read aloud in court.

“I just miss you so much,” the text continued. “I just want to hang out with you.”

Her father replied by apologizing for being so “unreachable.” “It's not fair to you,” he wrote.

After her testimony ended, Naomi hugged her father. As Hunter walked out of the courtroom for a break, he held first lady Jill Biden’s hand. The first lady has attended most of the trial, which began Monday, but traveled briefly to France with the president on Thursday. She flew back to return to court on Friday.

Before calling Naomi, Hunter’s defense team called a former employee of the Wilmington gun store that sold Hunter the gun. Lowell peppered the employee, Jason Turner, about the form on which Hunter allegedly lied.

Turner told jurors there was an inconsistency on the form as he remembered it. The form requested a piece of identification that lists an address. Because Hunter provided his passport, which does not include his address, a second form of identification was required.

Turner said they included Hunter’s vehicle registration to meet the address requirement. But the form entered into evidence did not mention his registration.

“That form’s wrong,” Turner, who appeared frustrated on the stand, said about the missing information.

Earlier on Friday, the prosecution rested its case after three and a half days of calling its own witnesses, including three of Hunter’s former romantic partners who testified in raw terms about Hunter’s struggles with addiction.

The prosecution’s final two witnesses, both of whom testified on Friday morning, were Jason Brewer, an FBI forensic chemist, and Joshua Romig, an assistant special agent in charge at the Drug Enforcement Administration. Brewer testified about testing residue he determined to be cocaine from a pouch where Biden allegedly kept the gun. Romig testified about a series of text messages that showed Biden was buying crack in 2018.

WILMINGTON, Delaware — Hunter Biden’s sister-in-law and former romantic partner, Hallie Biden, took the stand at his trial on gun-related charges Thursday and told jurors she believed he was using crack cocaine around the time he bought a pistol in the fall of 2018.

Federal prosecutors asked Hallie about a series of text messages she exchanged with Hunter in the days after he bought a Colt revolver on Oct. 12, 2018.

In the texts, Hunter said he was “waiting for a dealer named Mookie” and said he was “sleeping on a car smoking crack.”

The texts, along with Hallie’s testimony, are pivotal evidence as prosecutors try to prove that Hunter was an active drug user when he purchased the firearm. Special counsel David Weiss has charged the president’s son with three federal felonies for allegedly lying about his drug use when he bought the gun and then illegally possessing the gun for less than two weeks.

Hallie was married to Hunter’s brother, Beau, who died in 2015. She later became romantically involved with Hunter.

She testified that on the morning of Oct. 23, 2018 — the day she found and threw away the gun — Hunter appeared as if he could have been using drugs. He had arrived at her home either early that morning or late the night before, she said.

“He was tired, exhausted, looked like he hadn't slept,” she told the jury.

She said she cleaned out his truck and found remnants of crack cocaine, as well as drug paraphernalia.

“Oh, and the gun,” she added. “Obviously.”

She “panicked” and decided to throw away the gun at a nearby high-end grocery store in Wilmington. So she put it in a leather pouch she found in his truck, then put the pouch in a bag, and drove the bag to Janssen’s Market, where she put it in an outside garbage can.

“I realize it was a stupid idea now, but I was just panicking,” she said.

She also testified that Hunter introduced her to crack cocaine, and she began using the drug during the relationship.

“It was a terrible experience that I went through, and I'm embarrassed and I'm ashamed and I regret that period of my life,” she said.

She is the third former romantic partner of the president’s son to be called to the stand by prosecutors. On Wednesday, Hunter’s ex-wife and another woman described in harrowing detail Hunter’s abuse of crack cocaine, but neither of those witnesses testified about his alleged drug use at the exact time he bought and owned the gun.

Hunter’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, has argued that Hunter had recently completed a rehab program when he bought the gun and believed at the time that he was not addicted.

During an arduous and detail-heavy cross-examination, Lowell pressed Hallie on when exactly her brother-in-law arrived at her house on Oct. 23, when she first knew he was there, and when she found the gun in his truck. Her recall of those details seemed to grow fuzzy during the questioning.

Hallie also said she did not see him using drugs that day, and conceded he could have just been exhausted.

He also asked her if she knew whether Hunter was telling the truth when he texted her about meeting a dealer named Mookie and laying on a car smoking crack.

She said she did not know if those statements were true.