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Notes -
Sorry, I realized that it was about lying on the form rather than use. My thought was that he had a plausible defense of being on the wagon during, say, that month. Thank you for pointing me to the one-year limit.
It does in fact sound like this should have been open-and-shut.
As a small nitpick, the firearm charge is being put through a pretrial diversion program.
The probation is for the tax charges.
I am not licensed to practice law, but my discussions with a few lawyers seem to suggest that pretrial diversion for a federal firearms charge is fairly rare, compared to probation or other penalties.
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He's getting probation for other, unrelated crimes that he unquestionably committed. The guidelines for multiple counts in the same sentencing are a mess, but I think it'd end up adding two or four offense levels, depending on how you do the math.
Just these three matters alone get him to Zone B, where the sentencing guidelines hold that "the court may impose probation only if it imposes a condition or combination of conditions requiring a period of community confinement, home detention, or intermittent confinement sufficient to satisfy the minimum term of imprisonment specified in the guideline range."
And then there's the other gun we have photographic evidence that he possessed illegally, that possessing the firearm and lying on the form are different violations of law, the piles of cocaine, the potential FARA violations, so on.
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