Hunter Biden, who was convicted in June on three felony counts in connection with false statements he made on a federal form while purchasing a gun, will face sentencing in November, a federal judge said Friday.
The younger Biden falsely certified that he was “not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance,” when he filled out a federal Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) form to buy a Colt Cobra revolver from a Delaware gun shop five years ago.
He wrote in his memoir that he was smoking crack nearly every 15 minutes around the time he purchased the gun.
With his guilty verdict in June, Hunter became the first child of a sitting president to face a criminal conviction.
The November 13 hearing will take place one week after the presidential election — though President Joe Biden recently announced his decision to drop out of the race.
A defendant in this type of case would normally face between 15 to 21 months in prison. While he could face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a $750,000 fine, that would be an unlikely outcome as Hunter is a first-time offender.
He is likely to meet with a federal probation officer who will issue recommendations to the judge, who will determine the final sentence, ahead of the hearing.
U.S. district judge Maryellen Noreika gave both parties an October 30 deadline to file any sentencing memorandum that requests a sentence outside the federal sentencing guidelines. If neither party makes a request outside those guidelines, they have until November 6 to file their memoranda.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, previously said he planned to “vigorously pursue” all available legal challenges to the verdict.
President Biden, meanwhile, has said he will not pardon his son.
Ahead of the trial, Noreika rejected a plea deal that would have seen the younger Biden plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax violations and submit to a pre-trial diversion agreement to avoid a felony gun charge in exchange for broad immunity from future prosecution. Noreika then dismissed the two outstanding misdemeanor tax charges at the request of federal prosecutors, who later pursued new charges in both the gun and tax cases.
In December 2023, Hunter was indicted in California on nine criminal charges as part of the Department of Justice investigation into his taxes. Those charges include three felony counts for alleged tax evasion and filing a false return and six misdemeanor charges for alleged failure to pay taxes between 2016 and 2019.
He has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.