Rapper Kodak Black’s lawyer on Tuesday slammed the Justice Department for allowing Hunter Biden to plead guilty to federal tax and firearms charges in a deal that’s expected to carry no prison time and leave the first son’s record free of felony convictions.
Bradford Cohen, Black’s Florida-based attorney, decried Hunter’s apparent slap on the wrist, alluding to “2 tiers of justice” which he claims led his client to be sentenced to 46 months in prison for the same crime that President Biden’s son has been charged with.
“2 tiers of justice? Kodak was charged for the same crime. Got over 3 years. Mr. Biden will not serve a day. Feels right? Do FBI agents and federal authorities take cases personally?” Cohen wrote in an Instagram post on Tuesday.
Black, a two-time Grammy Award nominee, pleaded guilty in 2019 to providing an incorrect Social Security number on a federal gun purchase form in order to buy three firearms from a Miami-area shop.
The “Bodak Yellow” rapper had a criminal record that would have disqualified him from buying the weapons.
Despite his plea, Black, whose real name is Bill Kapri, was sentenced to more than 3 years in federal prison.
Cohen explained in a Twitter post that in his decades working in the criminal justice system, he has yet to have a client avoid prison time after pleading guilty to illegal possession of a weapon and tax evasion charges.
“After 26 years, I have yet to have a plea in a case with an illegal possession of a weapon and tax evasion, that did not come with some kind of prison sentence. Indigents charged the same way would be getting jail time,” Cohen said.
The attorney added that in his opinion, far less serious crimes have resulted in penalties that involve some sort of incarceration.
“Even in the case of paying off coaches to get their kids into college came with a prison sentence. One even got 2 weeks, even though she was scoring no jail time. The system was so petty that they made her surrender to a federal prison for 2 weeks! But in this case nothing,” a dismayed Cohen wrote.
Black was pardoned by former President Donald Trump on his final day in office.
The rapper was among the 73 individuals pardoned by Trump on Jan. 20, 2021. Another 70 people had their sentences commuted by the outgoing president.
The charges against Hunter Biden, announced by Delaware US Attorney David Weiss’ office on Tuesday morning, come after a five-year investigation into the first son for failing to report millions of dollars in income from countries such as China and Ukraine.
As part of the deal, Hunter Biden will plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges of failing to pay federal income tax and will enroll in a pretrial diversion agreement on the felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user after he lied on a federal gun purchase form in October 2018 about his addiction.
The final decision on whether to approve the deal is up to a federal judge.
