A new court filing by federal prosecutors on Tuesday claims the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) found cocaine powder on a firearm pouch Hunter Biden used for a gun he allegedly purchased in October of 2018.
In a response motion to Hunter Biden’s selective prosecution claim filed by Special Counsel David Weiss, federal prosecutors documented that FBI investigators allegedly discovered cocaine after obtaining the firearm in 2023.
“In 2023, FBI investigators pulled sealed evidence from the state police vault to take photographs of the defendant’s firearm,” the response motion stated. “After opening the evidence, FBI investigators observed a white powdery substance on the defendant’s brown leather pouch that had held the defendant’s firearm in October 2018.”
Federal prosecutors explained that based on experience and training, the FBI investigators believed the white substance was “likely cocaine” and that the evidence would “corroborate the messages that investigators had obtained which showed the defendant buying and using drugs in October 2018.”
After FBI investigators made the initial discovery, an FBI chemist examined the substance and determined that the powder was cocaine. In the response motion, federal prosecutors added, “To be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun.”
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According to The Daily Caller, Hunter Biden has previously acknowledged his struggle to overcome an addiction to crack cocaine. The response motion by the Department of Justice included selections from Hunter Biden’s memoir about his addiction, “Beautiful Things,” as well as messages from the president’s son’s Apple iCloud account that appear to reference the purchase and use of crack cocaine.
The federal filing notes, “These episodes of persistent drug usage, documented by the defendant, in the immediate time frame before, during, and after his possession of the gun were evidence that he lied during the background check and unlawfully possessed the gun in October 2018.”
According to The Daily Caller, the Justice Department’s latest filing was in response to Hunter Biden’s claim that the department was politically pressured to prosecute him.
Prosecutors argued that Hunter Biden “produces no evidence to support his allegation that the Executive Branch, led by his father, President Biden, and its Justice Department, led by the Attorney General appointed by his father, authorized prosecution by the U.S. Attorney and Special Counsel of their choosing for an ‘improper political purpose.'”
Hunter Biden currently faces up to 25 years in prison after he was indicted in September on three federal gun charges.