Judge Hunter Biden handed down harsh sentence in similar gun case

US News

By Émilie Grue

The federal judge who will soon decide Hunter Biden’s fate after his sentencing Tuesday recently imposed a harsher prison sentence than expected in a similar gun case.

Judge Maryellen Noreika sentenced the defendant, Zhi Dong, to one year in prison, twice the length prosecutors requested, on May 2.

Dong had pleaded guilty to making a false statement when purchasing firearms after lying about his address on government forms when he purchased more than a dozen guns in Delaware in 2020.

President Biden’s son, meanwhile, was convicted on three counts related to lying about his drug use in order to purchase a gun.

Although he claimed to live in Delaware, Dong actually resided in Maryland with his wife and daughter, according to details of his case first reported by Politico.

Prosecutors noted in their sentencing memo that the father-of-one then drove the guns to California where he delivered them to a gun store — a move that was “indicative of gun trafficking fire “.

The DOJ – which stressed that Dong was not the “mastermind of the operation” – asked Noreika to sentence him to six months in prison after he admitted it was his first offense.

Noreika, on the contrary, chose to lock him up for a year.

Details of the case have surfaced as speculation mounts about how harshly Noreika plans to go after Hunter Biden after jurors found him guilty of making a false statement during the purchase of a firearm, making a false statement relating to information required to be maintained by a federally licensed firearms dealer and possession of a firearm by an illegal user or drug addict ‘a controlled substance.

The judge has not yet determined when she will impose Biden’s sentence, but she noted immediately after reading the verdict that sentencing hearings often take place about four months after conviction.

While the first son faces up to 25 years in prison, a lighter sentence is more likely given that he – like the defendant in last month’s case – has no previous convictions.

The judge was appointed to the bench in 2018 by the Biden family’s primary political antagonist: former President Donald Trump.

However, she was recommended to serve on the bench by the two Democratic senators.

Before being appointed as a federal judge, Noreika had not worked on criminal cases or presided over a courtroom.

Noreika, who spent 25 years with the Delaware law firm of Morris, Nichols, Arsht & Tunnell, spent much of her early career working in federal civil litigation related to intellectual property.