Special Counsel David Weiss indicted Hunter Biden on Thursday in relation to a gun purchased by Biden while he was allegedly a frequent drug user.
The indictment, filed in a federal court in Delaware, alleges that Biden lied on a form while purchasing a gun in October 2018.
According to the indictment, Biden purchased a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver and lied about his drug use while filing the paperwork.
Biden allegedly certified that he was not an unlawful user or addicted to any narcotic drug, “when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious.”
The federal indictment comes after a lawyer for Biden asserted that no further charges could be brought against him due to the terms of a deal he previously made with prosecutors.
Attorney Abbe Lowell had claimed that the deal “remains valid and prevents any additional charges from being filed against Mr. Biden, who has been abiding by the conditions of release under that agreement for the last several weeks, including regular visits by the probation office,” as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
Prosecutors pushed back on this statement, claiming that the deal was never actually in effect and the charges can be added, according to The Associated Press.
The felony gun charge was originally meant to be part of that plea deal, which was agreed to in June and also included misdemeanor tax evasion charges, as previously reported by The Dallas Express.
That deal would have required Biden to plead guilty to not paying taxes on more than $1 million of income in 2017 and 2018. He would not have had to serve any jail time for the charges, according to The Dallas Express.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) expressed disapproval of the deal, commenting, “It continues to show the two-tier system in America.”
“If you are the president’s leading political opponent, the [Department of Justice] tries to literally put you in jail and give you prison time. But if you are the president’s son, you get a sweetheart deal,” he remarked, as reported by The Dallas Express.
The plea bargain eventually fell apart after Judge Maryellen Noreika presented concerns that it would translate into blanket immunity for any other allegations.