relatable or will this be an albatross around the president s neck. joining us now is nbc news senior capitol hill correspondent garrett haake, nbc investigative correspondent, tom winter, nbc news senior legal correspondent, laura jarrett, and nbc legal analyst, and former manhattan assistant district attorney catherine christian. i can t think of a better group of people to talk to about this. laura, back to the basics, for everybody just joining us now. explain these charges. this all relates to something that happened in october of 2018 when hunter tried to buy a gun, according to the u.s. government, and got that gun while he was under the influence or at least at a time in his life where he was addicted as he would say to crack county. you are not allowed to be under the influence of crack county and buy a firearm. he fell out of form, lied, said he was not using drugs at that time. he only has the gun in his possession for roughly eleven days, according to our unders
he wanted to make sure we took care of everything that the department of justice was concerned about with respect to hunter biden. that was firearms charges, tax charges, but there s no actual substantiative connection between them, so it sounds like the department of justice is working on the tax aspects and perhaps other aspects, foreign registration, but this is pretty cut and dried, these firearms charges. i also want to bring in nbc news investigations correspondent tom winter, and, tom, again, just to remind folks who david weiss is this prosecutor, he s a special counsel, appointed by merrick garland when the last plea deal we have been talking about so much fell apart. what can you tell us about him and how he might operate or what we know about how he operates? it s been stated many times and as you and i talked before, chris, he was appointed by the former president of the united states, donald trump. i think it s important for folks to remember, yes, he was app