Years of scrutiny for a president’s son culminate in guilty verdict

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Hunter Biden has never sought elective office or been part of a presidential administration, but he has loomed large in the American political conversation for years.

His conviction in Delaware, the first federal criminal trial of a president’s son in US history, is for allegedly lying on a federal firearms background check and owning a firearm for 11 days in 2018 at a time when he was addicted to drugs and could land him behind bars. It has put a personal drama of addiction and betrayal in the public eye, an unwanted embarrassment for the Biden family.

Read more from CNN’s team covering the trial. Hunter Biden’s ex-wife, his ex-girlfriend, his brother’s widow – with whom he had an affair – and his daughter all testified.

Hunter Biden’s conviction will also serve as a sort of foil for former President Donald Trump’s conviction for lying on business records in New York.

That’s not to equate the two sets of charges or the trials. Trump was convicted for hiding his compensation of hush money paid to keep an alleged affair out of the media during the 2016 presidential campaign. He is also running again in the 2024 presidential election, while Hunter Biden is now an artist.

Hunter Biden also faces tax evasion charges in Los Angeles later this year, another case brought by the former Trump-appointed US attorney turned special counsel whose planned plea deal with Biden to settle both the gun and tax problems imploded last year when a Trump-appointed judge refused to accept it.

Trump feared a Joe Biden candidacy ahead of the 2020 election, and hoping to tarnish Biden’s reputation, in 2019 he