Hunter Biden dealt major blow to case on eve of federal gun trial

Hunter Biden has been dealt a major blow to his defense on the eve of his criminal trial on federal gun charges.

In a historic moment for America, the embattled son of the president is set to go on trial today on charges that he illegally bought a gun in 2018 while in the throes of drug addiction.

Jury selection will begin on Monday morning in federal court in Delaware, with the trial expected to last three to five days.

Biden has pleaded not guilty to the charges.

But Biden already looks set to face an uphill battle in the case following a series of 11th-hour rulings handed down by the judge on Sunday night.

In the rulings, US District Judge Maryellen Noreika blocked Biden’s legal team from presenting both a key piece of evidence and testimony from a key expert witness to jurors at his trial.

The president’s son’s defense had planned to show jurors two versions of the federal firearms form that had been filled out by Biden in 2018.

His attorneys argued that a second version had been “tampered with” by the gun store employees in 2021 – seeking to cast doubts on the credibility and “political bias” of the individuals expected to be called as prosecution witnesses.

The judge struck down the request to enter the second version as evidence and admonished the defense for pushing “conspiratorial” theories about the store workers.

The judge also sided with the prosecution in its bid to block expert testimony from Dr Elie Aoun, a drug addiction expert and clinical psychiatry professor at Columbia University who would have spoken to the “definition and understanding of a ‘user’ and an ‘addict’” and how addicts “view themselves”.

The president’s son was hit with three felony gun charges in Delaware in September over a gun