Federal prosecutors say a brown leather pouch used by Hunter Biden to store a gun had cocaine on it.
On Tuesday, prosecutors asked a judge to reject President Biden’s son Hunter’s efforts to dismiss gun charges because investigators found cocaine residue on the pouch used to hold his gun.
Prosecutors told the judge that ‘the strength of the evidence against him is overwhelming,’ rejecting Hunter Biden’s claims that he was being singled out for political reasons.
Hunter Biden previously made incriminating statements about his drug use in a 2021 memoir, but now investigators are saying the cocaine was found on the gun pouch after it was pulled from a state police vault last year.
A chemist with the FBI determined the residue was cocaine, prosecutors said.
‘To be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun,’ prosecutors said.
The president’s son pleaded not guilty to federal gun charges in U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware in October, which accused him of lying about using drugs in October 2018 on a gun purchase form.
He has acknowledged struggling with a crack cocaine addiction during that period in 2018, but his attorneys say he did not break the law. Hunter Biden has since said he has stopped using drugs and is working to turn his life around.
Hunter Biden was charged with making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm; making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federal firearms licensed dealer; and one count of possession of a firearm by a person who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.
According to the indictment, ‘on or about October 12, 2018, in the District of Delaware, the defendant, Robert Hunter Biden, in connection with the acquisition of a firearm, that is, a Colt Cobra 38SPL Revolver with serial number RA 551363…knowingly made a false and fictitious written statement, intended and likely to deceive that dealer with respect to a fact material to the lawfulness of the sale of the firearm…in that the defendant, Robert Hunter Biden, provided a written statement on Form 4473 certifying he was not an unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious.’
The indictment also states that ‘on or about October 12, 2018, through on or about October 23, 2018, in the District of Delaware, the defendant Robert Hunter Biden, knowing that he was an unlawful user of and addicted to any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance…did knowingly possess a firearm, that is, a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver with serial number RA 551363, said firearm having been shipped and transported in interstate commerce.’
Fox News first reported in 2021 that police had responded to an incident in 2018 when a gun owned by Hunter Biden was thrown into a trash can outside a market in Delaware.
A source with knowledge of the Oct. 23, 2018, police report told Fox News that it indicated that Hallie Biden, who is the widow of President Biden’s late son, Beau, and who was in a relationship with Hunter at the time, threw a gun owned by Hunter in a dumpster behind a market near a school.
A firearm transaction report reviewed by Fox News indicated that Hunter Biden purchased a gun earlier that month.
On the firearm transaction report, Hunter Biden answered in the negative when asked if he was ‘an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.’
Hunter Biden was discharged from the Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.
Fox News’ Brooke Singman and the Associated Press contributed to this report.