US President Joe Biden’s son Hunter was convicted on Thursday of illegally purchasing a gun five years ago after he admitted he was heavily using drugs.

Hunter Biden was charged with two counts of making false statements for claiming on forms that he was not illegally using drugs when he purchased a Colt revolver in Delaware.

The third charge stated that, based on false statements, he illegally possessed a firearm – a charge that carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

The charges were filed by Justice Department special counsel David Weiss, who has been investigating Biden since 2018.

It came two months after Biden and Weiss reached a plea agreement covering gun charges as well as alleged tax violations, amid disagreements over whether the president’s son could face unspecified additional charges.

In the July deal, Biden agreed to plead guilty to two minor tax charges.

He was offered probation in exchange, since he had already paid off the fines he owed the government.

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In the same deal, Weiss agreed to suspend the felony charge if Biden completed “pretrial diversion,” which often involves counseling or rehabilitation.

But in a dramatic July 26 hearing, the deal failed over the issue of whether Biden would have been exempted from any other charges investigated by Weiss, including potentially related to his business dealings in Ukraine, China and elsewhere. Crimes were also included.

The judge mentioned the possibility that Biden could be charged with working as a lobbyist for foreign governments without registering with the Justice Department.

Three weeks later, after the deal collapsed, Weiss dropped the tax fees and indicated in a court filing that new fees would be introduced in other states.

And he told a Delaware court that an indictment on the gun charges would come by the end of September.

The legal troubles of Biden, 53, a Yale-trained lawyer and lobbyist, have cast a shadow over his father’s re-election campaign.

Without presenting any evidence, Republicans have accused Biden’s Justice Department of protecting his son and accused Republican appointee Weiss of being soft on Hunter.