Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Monday he thinks most Americans would not have to face the gun charges for which President Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, is currently on trial in Delaware.
In remarks to HuffPost, Graham defended the president’s son against the gun charges but said he thinks the second indictment Hunter Biden faces, charging him with tax crimes, is more legitimate.
“I think any average American who’s done their taxes like Hunter Biden would have probably faced prosecution,” Graham said about the tax case, which is slated to go to trial in California in September.
“However, I don’t think the average American would have been charged with the gun thing,” he continued. “I don’t see any good coming from that.”
The president’s son faces three felony charges, including two for allegedly lying on a federal background form when purchasing a gun in 2018. Prosecutors say he indicated on the form that he was not using illegal drugs and that he was not an addict, when, in fact, he was addicted to crack cocaine at the time.
He faces a third charge for unlawfully possessing the firearm for 11 days.
Hunter Biden, who has pleaded not guilty, has more recently been open about his experiences with addiction, detailing his journey in his 2021 memoir.
His attorneys have suggested, however, that he may have thought he was telling the truth when filling out the form, contending that he did not then view himself as an addict at the time.
“The issue here is Mr. Biden’s understanding of the question, which asks in the present tense if he ‘is’ a user or addict,” Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, wrote in court filings. “The terms ‘user’ or ‘addict’ are not defined on the form and were not explained to him.
“Someone, like Mr. Biden who had just completed an 11-day rehabilitation program and lived with a sober companion after that, could surely believe he was not a present tense user or addict,” he continued.
Hunter Biden faces a separate criminal indictment in California, his second indictment stemming from special counsel David Weiss’s probe of his business dealings. He faces three felony tax charges related to tax evasion and filing a false return, as well as six misdemeanor charges for failure to pay taxes between 2016 and 2019.
Biden’s attorney has dismissed the charges as part of a broader case that would not have warranted a prosecutor’s attention without the scrutiny brought by the GOP.
“Based on the facts and the law, if Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought,” Lowell said in a statement at the time the case was brought.
The Hill has reached out to Graham’s office for further comment.