US court finds President Biden's son guilty
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 11 June 2024
⏱️ 47 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
A US court has found President Biden's son, Hunter,guilty of lying about his drug use when buying a gun.
He has been found guilty on all three charges in a federal gun crime trial. The jury in Delaware found that he'd lied about his drug use on a form while buying a weapon in 2018.
He is the first child of a sitting president to be convicted in a federal court. How will this affect his father's re-election campaign?
Also in the programme: Donors have gathered in Germany for a conference on Ukraine's reconstruction, but there are concerns as to whether it's free of corruption; how President Macron's surprise announcement of a snap election has triggered a potentially dramatic re-alignment in French politics; and we'll hear about a production of King Lear - staged by Ukrainians in Ukrainian - in the town of Shakespeare's birth.
(Photo shows Hunter Biden holding hands with First Lady Jill Biden and his wife Melissa Cohen Biden as he departs his federal gun trial in Wilmington, Delaware, USA on 11 June 2024. Credit: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA)
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Newsar from the BBC World Service coming to you live from our |
| 0:08.8 | studios in Central London I'm Julian Marshall. |
| 0:13.4 | U.S. President Biden's son, Hunter Biden, has today added another solid page to American history |
| 0:21.3 | books, less than two weeks after Donald Trump became the first |
| 0:24.8 | former president to be convicted of a criminal offense, Hunter Biden has been found guilty |
| 0:30.4 | of federal gun charges in the first criminal prosecution of the child of a sitting president. |
| 0:37.4 | The jury in Delaware found that he'd lied about his drug use while filling in a form to buy a weapon in 2018. |
| 0:44.7 | Speaking to the media after the verdict, |
| 0:46.6 | the Department of Justice Special Counsel David Weiss said |
| 0:51.0 | he gave his reaction rather to the verdict. |
| 0:55.0 | No one in this country is above the law. |
| 0:58.0 | Everyone must be accountable for their actions, even this defendant. |
| 1:02.8 | However, Hunter Biden should be no more accountable than any other citizen convicted of this same |
| 1:10.8 | conduct. |
| 1:12.0 | The prosecution has been and will continue to be |
| 1:15.8 | committed to this principle and to the principles of federal prosecution in |
| 1:21.1 | carrying out its responsibilities. |
| 1:23.0 | Hunter Biden has written about his struggle with drug addiction. |
| 1:27.0 | excerpts of the audio version read by the author himself were played to the court. |
| 1:32.0 | My drug use accelerated in tandem with my stress. |
| 1:35.0 | Smoking crack cocaine every three days, soon became smoking every two days, |
| 1:40.0 | then every other day, then every hour of every day. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.