From collapsed plea deal to trial: How Hunter Biden has come to face jurors on federal gun charges

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s son was in federal court, prepared to plead guilty to misdemeanor tax offenses. The culmination of a sprawling investigation, the deal between Hunter Biden and prosecutors was going to spare him a politically explosive trial in the middle of his father’s reelection campaign and likely prison time.

But it all fell apart.

Now, Hunter Biden is headed to trial on federal gun charges in a case brought by his father’s Justice Department at a time when America’s political and legal worlds are colliding like never before. Dogged for years by investigations, scrutinized over his troubled personal life and vilified by Republicans, the younger Biden is now also confronting the threat of felony convictions and time behind bars.

The case opening Monday with jury selection in Delaware is not about Hunter Biden’s business dealings, which have been the focus of the yearslong federal investigation and Republicans’ fruitless impeachment inquiry into the Democratic president. It’s about a gun Hunter Biden had for about 11 days — a .38-caliber Colt Cobra Special. Prosecutors say he bought it illegally in October 2018 because he falsely swore on a federal form that he was not a drug user. He never fired the gun, according to his lawyers, and it ended up dumped in a trash can.

The trial will lack details about his foreign business matters that Republicans have seized on to try to paint the Biden family as corrupt, but it is expected to feature deeply personal and embarrassing testimony about dark time in the younger Biden’s life. And it probably will provide new political impetus for Donald Trump’s allies, who are eager to distract from the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s own legal