A Supreme Court gun decision slammed by President Joe Biden could be key to Hunter Biden's legal defense if he's charged by the Department of Justice for lying about his crack cocaine addiction to purchase a gun in 2018.
Hunter Biden is being investigated by the DOJ for his purchase of a firearm after filling out a federal form on which he said he was not using illegal narcotics. Since then, he's admitted to using crack cocaine at the time, writing in his 2021 memoir that he was "smoking crack every 15 minutes."
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Attorneys for the younger Biden say they've already told the DOJ if their client is charged, he will challenge the constitutionality of the Gun Control Act of 1968's prohibitions under last year's Supreme Court decision known as New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, according to at least two sources briefed on the matter. The law applies to people who have admitted to using illegal drugs 12 months before buying a gun, and violators can receive up to 15 years in prison.
When reached by the Washington Examiner for comment, the younger Biden's attorney, Clark Smith Villazor LLP partner Chris Clark, hung up the phone after saying: "No thanks."
In the months after the June 2022 high court ruling, Hunter Biden's attorneys told DOJ prosecutors, who were probing whether to charge him in connection with the 2018 handgun purchase, that a prosecution of him would likely be ruled moot, according to the two sources.
In Bruen, Justice Clarence Thomas authored a 6-3 opinion that “modern firearms regulations” must be “consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding.”
The plan for the younger Biden's legal counsel to cite this decision is momentous because the president notably said the high court's striking of New York's concealed carry law "contradicts common sense and the Constitution."
"I am deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court’s ruling," the president said on June 23 last year, adding the ruling "should deeply trouble us all."
The U.S. attorney in Delaware, David C. Weiss, is close to concluding his investigation into Hunter Biden as uncertainty mounts about the legality of many gun laws after the landmark Bruen ruling. An analysis conducted in March by Jake Charles, an associate professor at Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law, found there had been at least 30 successful claims in just under a year since Bruen was handed down.
The Washington Examiner contacted Weiss for a response.
Joe Biden has vigorously defended his son as federal officials are probing his potential gun and tax crimes, saying he's "done nothing wrong."
Meanwhile, Joe Biden has spent much of his career calling for stricter gun laws. As president, he said before a joint session of Congress in 2021 that "we need more Senate Republicans to join with the overwhelming majority of their Democratic colleagues, and close loopholes and require background checks to purchase a gun.” After a March 27 shooting at a Nashville Christian school, Joe Biden said Republicans were meeting "this epidemic with a shrug."
The Bruen decision has had sweeping impacts in court battles over state firearm laws concerning the use of federally prohibited drugs. Some courts have handed drug-using plaintiffs a win on such claims, though most courts have still upheld the law banning drug users from owning guns.
In February, Oklahoma federal district Judge Patrick Wyrick ruled the government could not prosecute a defendant who was caught with a gun and had marijuana in his car. Wyrick penned an opinion that strongly relied on Bruen, stating that banning marijuana users from owning guns “is inconsistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Additionally, a district judge in Texas ruled in April against the constitutionality of the 1968 law when it was used against a woman who possessed both marijuana and psilocybin in her home. The DOJ has appealed both cases out of Oklahoma and Texas.
But shortly after Bruen came down, a Mississippi district judge on July 8 last year wasn't willing to fulfill a defendant's efforts to overturn his conviction under the 1968 law. That defendant has appealed.
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The split in federal district courts has yet to bubble up to a petition before the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 Republican-appointed majority and has been viewed as handing victories to the gun lobby with its Bruen decision.
It remains to be seen what the Supreme Court might do if it should have to toil between the issue of Second Amendment freedoms and prohibitions under the 1968 law, though the president's son could play a part in those deliberations should the DOJ seek to prosecute the younger Biden.