Feds could use Hunter Biden’s gun charge to ‘leverage’ plea deal

Prosecutors could use a potential indictment against Hunter Biden on gun charges to “leverage” a new plea deal and settle his other legal woes — including potential tax charges and a probe into the scandal-scarred first son’s foreign dealings, experts told The Post.

Special Counsel David Weiss’ office Wednesday said it intended to seek a grand jury indictment against President Biden’s 53-year-old son on a felony gun charge — for allegedly possessing a gun while addicted to crack cocaine — before the statute of limitations runs out next month.

Weiss is pursuing the gun charge indictment after a sweetheart plea deal fell through in July in which the younger Biden would have copped to two misdemeanor tax charges and entered into a diversion program for lying about his drug use when he bought a gun in the fall of 2018.

The gun charge he would have pled to was a felony crime but wasn’t indicted by a grand jury.

David Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor, told The Post that an indictment on that gun charge is “not that significant” and could be merely “a placeholder” — meaning Weiss could still potentially bring a case against Biden related to any potential illegal foreign dealings or felony tax charges.

“It’s holding in place the ability to use his leverage — a felony gun charge — in negotiations with Hunter Biden to resolve his global criminal exposure,” Weinstein said.

Weiss may prefer to enter into another plea deal with the first son — rather than let it go to trial — because the particular gun charge, linked to drug use, is “rarely” prosecuted and an appeals court last month overturned a conviction on that same charge in an unrelated case, Weinstein said.

Still, that appeals court, located in the south, is a different jurisdiction than the Delaware case against Biden and is, therefore, “not binding,” Weinstein said.

Even though the initial plea agreement imploded in July, that doesn’t mean another agreement couldn’t be struck between Hunter and Weiss, according to the former federal prosecutor.

This time, however, Biden could “see [a plea offer] that’s a little more severe in terms of him having to do a small amount of actual jail time,” Weinstein said.

“But they could come back to the table and reach something that was close to what was there,” he added.

The prior deal broke down because of a “combination of factors” — including that Biden’s camp thought he would be receiving “blanket immunity,” which Weinstein said Weiss didn’t have the authority to offer at the time.

But in August, Weiss was appointed special counsel, which would give him the ability to make that sort of “global plea deal,” Weinstein said.

Still, the legal expert said he doesn’t necessarily think Weiss “is going to end up playing hardball” in potential ongoing negotiations.

Cornell Law Professor Robert Hockett also told The Post he agreed that an indictment on the gun charge could be used to bring about a larger settlement.

But the professor said that Weiss would be cautious to avoid the appearance of going easy on the president’s son, given the criticism Weiss received from the right on the prior plea deal.

Republicans accused the Delaware attorney of offering the sweetheart deal as repayment to the Biden family for not demanding his resignation. Weiss was appointed by former President Donald Trump.

“My guess would be that the way Republicans keep laying into [Weiss] and suggesting that he’s got some sort of personal interest in going light on Mr. Biden … I think it would be only human for Mr. Weiss to try to avoid anything that might smack of or appear to be less than objective or excessively favorable to the Biden family,” Hockett said.

Still, Weiss will follow the law “and the norms of the profession of prosecutors” and offer a deal — if a plea agreement seems more likely to succeed than a trial conviction, Hockett said.

As to Weiss’ right-wing critics, the professor said: “He’s engineered this quite nicely, he’s turned the whole thing into a gun-control case.”

“That’s going to put all the Republicans who hate Biden in a weird position because they are against gun control anyway,” he said.