One of former President Donald Trump’s key allies took Hunter Biden’s side on his current gun prosecution.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, South Carolina Republican, agreed with the defense attorney’s claims that the president’s son is being persecuted because of his name.

In remarks Monday to HuffPost, Mr. Graham distinguished between the two federal cases — tax charges in California and firearms charges in Delaware — being pursued against the younger Mr. Biden.

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“I think any average American who’s done their taxes like Hunter Biden would have probably faced prosecution,” he said.

“However, I don’t think the average American would have been charged with the gun thing,” said the senator, a former member of the Air Force’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps. “I don’t see any good coming from that.”

In the trial that started this week in Delaware, Mr. Biden faces three charges accusing him of illegally purchasing and possessing a gun while abusing or being addicted to drugs.

Federal law prohibits addicts from purchasing guns and there are questions on gun-purchase forms, filed under penalty of perjury, asking about that. Mr. Biden stated in a 2021 memoir that he was habitually using crack at the time he bought the gun.

Biden lawyer Abbe Lowell has said that the charges, and an unrelated one brought in California accusing Mr. Biden of failing to pay taxes, are politically motivated.

“Based on the facts and the law, if Hunter’s last name was anything other than Biden, the charges in Delaware, and now California, would not have been brought,” he said in a statement when the California charges were brought.

Mr. Trump has spoken similarly about the cases against him — that they were at worst trivialities or misdemeanors that are only becoming dozens of felony counts because he is running for president.