The jury in a Wilmington, Delaware, federal court convicted Hunter Biden, the son of US President Joe Biden, on all three felony charges Tuesday morning after three hours and five minutes of deliberations.

The younger Biden was found guilty of lying on a gun application and to a federally licensed gun dealer about his drug use and illegally possessing a gun while addicted to drugs in October 2018.

Although the offenses were committed prior to Joe Biden’s term in office, the conviction of Hunter Biden is the first time a member of a sitting US president’s immediate family has been found guilty of a crime.

Responding to the jury’s decision, President Biden said he accepted the outcome of the case and “will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal.”

The 12-person jury deliberated for one hour on Monday afternoon following closing arguments and two hours on Tuesday morning, reaching a unanimous decision so swiftly that the president’s wife, Jill Biden, did not make it into the courtroom in time to hear the verdict.

Speaking to CNN on Tuesday afternoon, one juror said the jury was not focused on Hunter Biden’s lifestyle but on the evidence. Another juror told CNN that all 12 jurors agreed that Hunter had knowingly lied on the gun application about his addiction. A third juror told CNN that the trial should never have been brought and “seemed like a waste of taxpayer money.”

The president’s son was indicted on the gun charges in September by US Attorney David Weiss, who had been appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland a month earlier. After the verdict, Weiss said that it was “not just about addiction” but about “illegal choices” Hunter Biden made, and that “no one is above the law.”

The sentencing of Hunter Biden by Judge Maryellen Noreika is expected to take place in early October. The maximum sentence on the three offenses is 25 years in prison and $750,000 in fines, although it is unlikely as a first-time offender that Biden will receive anything close to this. In addition, all or part of his sentence could, at the judge’s discretion, be served while on probation.

The guilty verdict brings to a conclusion the first of two cases brought by Weiss against Hunter Biden. The second involves tax offenses in a Los Angeles federal court and is scheduled to go to trial in September. David Weiss began an investigation of Hunter Biden in 2018 after being appointed US Attorney for Delaware by then-President Donald Trump.

Responding to the verdict, the Trump campaign sent a statement to CNN saying the trial has been “nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family.” Trump’s top adviser Stephen Miller posted on Twitter/X that the Department of Justice charged Hunter Biden with a minor gun violation “in order to protect the BIG GUY before the election. DOJ is Biden’s election protection racket.”

Others within the Republican Party establishment have remained silent on the Hunter Biden trial because they consider laws requiring buyers to complete background applications and answer questions from licensed sellers to be a violation of gun ownership rights.

Like the conviction of Donald Trump on 34 counts in the New York hush-money trial, the gun charge conviction of Hunter Biden is the result of the ongoing warfare between different factions of the US ruling establishment arising from the crisis of the entire capitalist system.

Meanwhile, the trials of Trump and Hunter Biden are being used to divert public attention away from the real crimes being carried out by both the Democrats and Republicans.

While Donald Trump and a substantial faction of the Republican Party attempted to overthrow the US Constitution in the insurrection of January 6, 2021, and Joe Biden, with the backing of both parties in Congress, is funding and arming the Israeli genocide in Gaza and a proxy war in Ukraine against Russia that threatens World War III, these crimes are not the subject of the court cases.

Nor are the massive, bipartisan attacks on anti-genocide protesters and immigrants at the US-Mexico border.

It is now certain that this diversion will intensify with the sentencing of Hunter Biden for his gun-related conviction and his trial on tax charges scheduled to take place within weeks prior to the 2024 presidential election.