As expected, the DOJ special counsel indicted Hunter Biden today on charges of lying about his drug use when he purchased a handgun in 2018:
I was a fed'l l prosecutor for 20+ yrs. & did quite a few ATF cases, esp early on. I was also a supervisor for about 5 yrs, so I knew of all cases in our office. Not only have I never seen this statute charged, I never even HEARD of it until recently relative to Hunter Biden. ???? https://t.co/3tmyRUKgD5
— Elizabeth de la Vega (@Delavegalaw) September 14, 2023
Republicans have been complaining forever that the Hunter Biden investigation is politically biased. They're right. Hunter is being treated unusually harshly because the special counsel is afraid of Republican backlash. In a world with no fear of Republican retribution Hunter would, at most, be ordered into the diversion program that he was offered before the plea deal fell apart.
My neighbor is an Assistant District Attorney. He agreed that this type of charge is not common and would very likely result in diversion. However, he also commented, almost never do you have someone write a book, have video evidence of guilt etc. so the case is not typical on several fronts.
So if the case is a slam-dunk, we punish you harshly. But if the case isn’t so clear cut, we let you off with a warning. Checks out from the “law and order” party: let the most experienced criminals that are better at covering their tracks off easy.
Go fck yourself Middleoftheroadidiot.
Austin - two points
1. I am communicating the educated perspective of someone else, versus sharing my point of view.
2. I THINK (I did not ask this clarification) he means, yes if you admit guilt/make it easy to convict THEN changing someone is more likely. Further, Hunter Biden can be charged with a more serious option because Hunter would almost certainly lose at trial.
I question your judgment of what an "educated perspective" is.
MindGame - perhaps your day job is, or was, as prosecutor or a criminal defense attorney: otherwise, I imagine my neighbor has reasonable insight into the situation.
Now, you are fair to question my speculation (I was clear where my analysis starts/my neighbors insight ends).
Perhaps Hunter made a material mistake when he published a books where you admitted to felonies. It seems likely, the ease of making a case and the likelyhood of winning the case impacts the negotionations with Hunter
I once had someone tell me that children were being abducted regularly from Disneyland and this was hushed up by the Disney Company. She knew this because an Orange County Deputy D A told her so. When I challenged that her response was pretty close to yours here.
You've got a real burr under your saddle, don't you? Lighten up.
Further, Hunter Biden can be charged with a more serious option because Hunter would almost certainly lose at trial.
Would almost certainly is how many people these days say "I'm speculating without a shred of evidence."
Jasper_in_Boston - I know nothing beyond what is public. With that said, writing a book, taking videos of yourself high, creates pretty damming evidence. Perhaps there is information or circumstances that I am not aware of. Or, maybe, applying Occam's razor, Hunter has real risk of losing at trial.
So yes, I am speculating. Just curious, do you think Hunter would win at trial?
The purpose of the justice system is protection of the public, not giving easy wins to prosecutors.
KenSchulz - I agree with you, in theory.
Now, in practice, do you believe that 'easy wins' has a meaningful role in the actions of prosecutors?
Kevin thinks the prosecutors succumbed to political pressure; you think they just went for an easy victory. Questionable ethics in either case, no?
Personally, I think ‘screw-up’ is a live possibility.
You're an asshole who appears on Kevin's blog to always be an asshole. Fuck you to hell and beyond for your shameful comments on this blog.
"Go fck yourself Middleoftheroadidiot."
That is infantile.
He's an asshole who is always an asshole on this blog. Fuck him. If Kevin had the ability to block people, middleoftheroaddem should be one of the first on it for his bad faith arguments and stirring shit up. (I'd be fine also being banned for my 'infantility.')
It is interesting. I share the perspective of someone, I believe, to be particularly knowledgable on the topic. I also, when asked on this thread, share my speculation. I never dispute that politics plays a serious role in the Hunter situation: frankly, how could one remove politics from the Hunter charges?
Think about this.
- Does anyone on this thread, based on the letter of the law, not believe that Hunter is likely guilty of one, or all, the gun charges?
- Does anyone on this thread think the defense, ' you seldom charge this offense, therefore you can't charge me' is fool proof. If so, try that defense when pulled over by the Highway Patrol
- Does anyone on this thread not think it was stupid, mind you Hunter has a law degree from Yale, to write about committing felonies/allow videos into the public, before the statue of limitations expired or he had legal immunity?
- Do you not believe that the strength of a legal case impacts how, if at all, a prosecutor negotiates?
You can hate me because you want to believe that this is all politics. Or you can be honest and see the intersection of politics, facts and the law.
But this is all politics. The guy pled guilty for a plea deal penalty that anyone else would have gotten, if not worse. It was withdrawn due to political pressure.
Everyone knows Trump is guilty in the documents case. Most, I think, would be happy with a plea deal in which he pled guilty and received a light sentence. He says he is innocent and his toadies go along with it. There is more than ample evidence of his guilt, far beyond a reasonable doubt. It’s basically what is referred to as an “dead bang case”. Are you sure he will be convicted? Why not?
I can’t wait for the inevitable argument that in 1789, no one was forbidden from purchasing a weapon because they lied about being a drug addict.
Maybe this is the one that will finally give Clarence Thomas an aneurysm.
Originalism saves Hunter’s bacon! In fact, there were no drug laws until late in the 19th century. The good old days, when fussy babies were dosed with laudanum …
To be fair, Trump is being treated pretty harshly, too. When was the last time a former president and a circle of cronies was charged for trying to overturn an election in Georgia? Or charged for stealing top-secret documents and then lying to a grand jury about returning them?
No, seriously. This was basically the point of Marc Thiessen's column in WaPo today. If you prosecute Republicans for serious felonies, is it any surprise that eventually they'll go after Democrats for stupid, irrelevant shit?
????????????????????
Obviously, the solution is to not go after anyone politically powerful or connected for their crimes. That should bode well for the future of the country.
Thiessen has become (always was?) a full-on autocrat, as he has come to realize that he will always be in the minority in a democracy.
I have (cautious) optimism that his new lawyer is going to be pushing back more. There are a large number of sketchy aspects to the case they're bringing, including what look like several felonies and evidence tampering. Just one part of that here:
https://www.emptywheel.net/2023/09/13/hunter-biden-sues-garrett-ziegler-for-hacking-his-iphone/
Everyone should be following Marcy Wheeler for insights into this and many other things.
Without bad faith….
..Republicans would have no arguments..
????????????????
With apologies to Albert King / William Bell:
If it wasn't for bad faith, they wouldn't have no faith at all.
Abbe Lowell, Hunter's mouthpiece, says that the diversion agreement was signed and as far as he is concerned remains in effect. I expect that he will make a motion to dismiss quite soon.
my understanding is that the 5th circuit court of appeals recently declared the statute with which h. biden is charged to be unconstitutional. obviously this does not apply nationally. but what kind of prosecutor would charge ANY defendant until there is some clarification on the status of the law? the answer is obvious.
A prosecutor who wants to further the GOP project of trying to divert attention from TFG’s felony indictments?
obviously this does not apply nationally.
I'll take your word that this is obvious. But district and circuit courts quite frequently make rulings the government as a whole must follow, don't they? What's the rule that governns this?
An Appellate court ruling is only binding within the circuit of the court. One of the criteria the Supreme Court uses for deciding whether to hear a case is if different circuits have different rulings.
Speculation, but I imagine that 99%+ republican members of congress own firearms and around 50%+ have used illegal drugs. The way people describe the law, you are only lying if you are a user of illegal drugs when you make the purchase. Also, private sales don't involve filing this form in most or all states.
Still, it seems likely that several percent of Republican congressmen have violated this law. Probably many more have children who've violated it. Maybe we should enforce the law.
You don't think any democratic members or congress own guns or have used drugs?
If you believe Madison Cawthorn Republicans are far more Libertine than Democrats.
"... believe Madison Cawthorn .."
That is a novel concept.
I noted that the Republican response seemed to be more “what a snitch” than “what a liar”.
Here's that favoritism in charging Republicans rather than Democrats that Fox is always talking about. Oh, whoops...
No, seriously, let the word go out in Trumpland that Trump wants lots of gun/drug offenses charged ????
Seriously, if the DOJ were, say, charging one of the Trump failsons with lying on one of their (I'm sure many) firearms permits, the right would be swallowing their own tongues in rage and we'd probably already be at war. At least some of them now are like "Ha! ha! See how dumb firearms regulations are? Libs hoist by their own petard!" (they don't really use that phrase because its too elitist, but you get the idea...)
That would possibly be true if the FBI/ATF actually scrutinized these things, or if prosecutors regularly charged people over it, but they almost never do because it would result in a *lot* of people getting their permits denied and that would bring a shitton of trouble down on them from Republicans in Congress and even nuttier (and more violent) 2A activists.
Is it really fair to say the DOJ caved? Isn't it just the special prosecutor?
No doubt he received tons of pressure from his professional & social peers to charge Hunter Biden. He saw what they did to Cheney & Kinzinger.
I go with that. We really need rethinking on this special prosecutor thing. Once you give a prosecutor that status, even one without political bias (if such a creature exists), there’s a lot of pressure to come up with something. Otherwise you’ve spent a lot of taxpayer money and you have to say, yeah, we got nuthin’. So you get John Durham bringing weak cases against bit players, or David Weiss throwing the book at a guy who needs just a stern lecture about taxes, and to stay in rehab. The public is not served by putting him in jail.
It'll never happen, but to me the obvious solution is to make the entire DOJ into a semi-autonomous department outside the executive branch. Have a commission chosen by all three branches (say, five each) that acts as an oversight board and appointment committee (appoints AG, assistant AGs, and US attorneys).
It is generally the case that the executive is now far too large and have far too much power to be all vested in a single person. It needs either to have more people vested with the power, e.g. an elected executive council, or a power sharing like your suggestion.
The advantage of your suggestion is that if you declare that the DOJ is not part of the executive, then the constitution doesn't say that it is under the president, so in principle it can be done without amending the constitution.
Right. Article 2 stipulates that the executive branch must "faithfully execute the law." That can mean a lot of things. Making sure Social Security checks go out. Seeing to it that national parks are accessible. Making sure FBI agents get paid. I don't think it need mean that the executive branch and only the executive must handle prosecutions.
Poor Hunter he lost his white privilege.
Please don't feed this troll.
You just did.
So is the GOP going to argue for more funding for the ATF to catch and prosecute criminal lying on forms like H. Biden?
Maybe the GOP would like to see mandatory drug testing for current and prospective gun owners?
Special Counsel is searching for a way out of this clusterfuck. He really didn't want to charge, but now he realizes that he looks ridiculous for doing so and he's hoping the judge rescues him or Hunter capitulates.
I.... don't care.
He did the crime and if he has to do time just because of his name, well he's traded on his name all his life as that is the only thing of value he has. Live by the sword die by the sword.
Presumably will be pardoned before actually doing any time.
Only if his father decides not to run for a second term.
I don't particularly care about Hunter, specifically. But it's a problem if a crime that thousands of people do every year is only enforced against Democrats, and an even bigger problem if a crime that thousands of people do every year is only enforced against members of specific Democrats' families. The rule of law isn't supposed to be "this law only applies to one individual in the entire US every year."
gotta start somewhere. I'll just be hopeful that this opens the floodgates for more gun charges nationwide.
Like +25.
He broke the law and prosecutorial discretion is doing the rest. That's the same criteria that applies everyone. If he hadn't broken the law would he be charged now?
If you want to defend a criminal be my guest but I'm not going to do so to someone the law is being lawfully apllied to.
You do understand that he had already worked out a plea bargain with respect to this crime?
No, of course you don’t.
I'm for MUCH stricter gun laws (definitely someone who DOES want to "take your guns"), so I'm totally fine with him getting slammed here.
This indiction is not related in any sense to stricter gun laws. It is pure partisanship.
I don't really care what the motivation is. This could potentially be pointed to in the future as justification for more gun law prosecutions, so that's good enough for me.
That is the point I was trying to make. It is not going to add justifications for more gun laws prosecutions, because it is so obviously partisan.
seems pretty much guaranteed that someone will use this as justification at some point. i'm not saying a republican will.
anyway, i'd be satisfied with one less gun owner with the potential to shoot someone or buy guns that could eventually get into the hands of others who might shoot someone.
As many has said, remember when the GOP was totally in favor of everyone and anyone (especially white men) owning guns? That was last week??
Ditto for not paying your taxes ("it's YORE MUNNI!") In a sane world, Hunter Biden would be a Maga Hero.
Yeah, weren't they all cheering that Texas judge's ruling that let domestic abusers keep their guns a few weeks back?
Right-wingers want to abolish the IRS.
The first bill they passed in the house was to explode the deficit by defunding the tax crime police.
The MAGAts’ new darlings are the IRS ‘whistleblowers’ — you know, the tax investigators that the GOP used to call ‘jackbooted thugs’.
Let me set aside the question about Biden specifically. When democrats talk about background checks and other common sense gun regulation, this is, I think, the sort of thing we're talking about.
The fact that folks buying guns are supposed to answer this really basic question and the fact that it is just so much BS indicates to me that all this rhetoric around "common sense" is also just BS. A person who lies about drug use should be prosecuted. I'd make them take a drug test and pass it before they get the gun. That's just common sense. If they have a prior conviction for drugs: No gun. If they have any sort of criminal conviction involving theft or assault: No gun. This is common sense. And it's never going to happen.
Otherwise... hypocrisy and inconsistency are the only constant in our civil discourse.
NYT: #1 story, front page, 2 columns above the fold
LAT: not one of 5 stories on front page, a small teaser at bottom to single-column story on page A6
The L.A. Times wins the day in exercising appropriate news judgment.
Hunter Biden would not be charged except his name is Hunter Biden and the prosecutor bowed to GOP pressure. NYT would not run the story on page 1 except it bowed (as it habitually does) to GOP pressure.
Here's the Hunter Biden scandal the GOP wants us to believe:
That Joe Biden as VP was so powerful & corrupt that he pressured Ukraine to fire a prosecutor to take pressure off a company where his son, Hunter Biden, was a board member.
Yet Joe Biden as president failed to stop his own DOJ from indicting his son on a charge no one in legal circles can describe as anything but prosecutorial overreach.
Something doesn't add up.
"NYT would not run ..."
The fact that one party pressured a special prosecutor to charge the son of the leadedr of the other party is actually front page news. The problem is that this is not what the NYtimes tell its readers.
Actually maybe they do.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/15/us/politics/hunter-biden-gun-charges.html
The title says that it is "unusuaul". Don't have access to actually read it.
Grafs 2 & 3:
In reality, few people fitting Mr. Biden’s profile — a first-time, nonviolent offender accused of lying on a federal firearms application, who never used the gun (in his case, a Colt Cobra .38 that he held onto for less than two weeks five years ago) to commit a crime — get serious prison time for the offenses charged in the indictment.
Just bringing the charges is out of the ordinary in some ways, former law enforcement officials say, and the legal basis of the prosecution is under constitutional challenge.
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