In a Wilmington, Delaware federal courthouse on Monday, a jury is being selected to hear a case against Hunter Biden involving charges that he unlawfully possessed a gun as a drug user, lied on a federal form about his drug use when he purchased the gun and made a false statement about a federally licensed gun deal. For this, he faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. If convicted, it’s more likely that he’ll be sentenced to 18 months in prison, largely because he has no prior criminal convictions. He also faces federal tax charges in California in a trial scheduled to begin in September. A conviction in the first case won’t help with sentencing if he is also convicted in the second. In case you live under a rock, Hunter Biden is the son of the president of the United States, Joe Biden. The prosecutors who are putting Hunter on trial in two different states work for his father as members of the executive branch of the U.S. government.

It’s important to realize that President Biden has not intervened to pressure his employees to drop charges against his son. It’s also important to realize that Hunter is guilty of purchasing and possessing a gun during a time when he was addicted to crack cocaine. Whether he’s actually responsible for lying about this on forms will be adjudicated at trial. There is some evidence that at least one of the forms was altered by the gun dealer.

As for mitigating factors, Hunter’s drug abuse became a serious problem after his brother Beau died of cancer in 2015. In 2019, he got sober and by all accounts has remained sober. His defense is likely to argue that he was in denial about his drug problem when he filled out the forms. To get a sense of what was going on at the time, Hunter was dating his brother’s widow, Hallie Biden. Hallie discovered the gun shortly after Hunter bought it, and concerned that he might commit suicide with it, she tossed it into a dumpster. It was discovered there by a man who was collecting recyclables who then alerted the police.

So, in a very real sense, Hunter is being prosecuted only because Hallie Biden tried to save his life. Whether she was right or not about the risk, she was in a position to know Hunter’s emotional state of mind, and it’s obvious he was a complete mess. He did not commit a crime with the gun. He wasn’t conspiring to commit a crime with it. He only had possession of it for two weeks.

Does any of this make him innocent? No, it doesn’t. Would similarly situated people face the same charges? Possibly, but I think they’d be allowed to plea out of it in return for a fine, probation and perhaps some mandatory counseling. That was originally the government’s intent, including on the separate tax charges, but a Trump-appointed judge in Delaware rejected the plea agreement and so here we are.

President Biden is obviously distraught about all of this. He’s been through too much pain and anguish with his children as it is. But he’s not using his position to help his son avoid accountability.

So, when Donald Trump accuses Biden of weaponizing the Justice Department, just keep in mind that if that were true, he wouldn’t be passively watching jury selection in a federal Wilmington courthouse in a case concerning his son.