Cocaine residue was found on Hunter Biden's gun pouch in 2018 case, prosecutors say

Federal prosecutors urged a judge on Tuesday to reject Hunter Biden’s efforts to dismiss the gun charges against him, revealing that investigators last year found cocaine residue on the pouch the president’s son used to hold his gun.

In pressing for the case against President Joe Biden’s son to proceed, prosecutors said “the strength of the evidence against him is overwhelming" and pushed back against Hunter Biden's claims that he is being singled out for political purposes.

In addition to “incriminating statements” Hunter Biden made about his drug use in his 2021 memoir, investigators found a white powdery substance on the brown leather pouch he used to store the gun after pulling it from the state police vault last year, prosecutors wrote. An FBI chemist determined it was cocaine, they said.

“To be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun,” prosecutors said.

Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to charges accusing him of lying about his drug use in October 2018 on a form to buy a gun that he kept for about 11 days. He has acknowledged struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine during that period in 2018, but his lawyers have said he didn’t break the law. Hunter Biden has since said that he’s stopped using drugs and has worked to turn his life around.

His attorneys didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the prosecutors' filing Tuesday.

These criminal proceedings could have been avoided with a plea deal last year, but an agreement with federal prosecutors fell apart and now the president’s son is facing the spectacle of a trial this year while his father is campaigning. He was indicted after the plea deal broke down when a judge who was supposed to