Will Hunter Biden Walk?
Posted: Fri Feb 23, 2024 11:47 pm
There are kinds of interesting court motions pending in Hunter Biden land. Having once again ventured down the Hunter Biden rabbit hole, I can report that there are more Hunter Biden lawsuits than I imagined.
Keep in mind that most of the evidence we are aware of has been developed and controlled by Congressional Republicans. They select the witnesses to testify. They decide which witnesses testify publicly and which are only deposed being closed doors. They decide which documents to release and which to withhold from the public.
Hunter is doing the investigation the Relief Society will never do. Only he’s doing it with a lower profile than the Congressional grandstanders. He’s doing it through discovery and motions in several lawsuits. Besides the criminal case, he has suits against the laptop guy, Giuliani, the IRS and others. And it’s there where the investigation into how Hunter just happened to drop off a laptop that he forgot to pick up, how a legally blind store owner just happened to read the contents of the laptop (because that’s what you do with someone else’s computer, and why copies of data from the laptop just happened to be given to R operatives like Rudy and Steve Bannon, and how this all just happened to happen in the weeks leading up to the presidential election. And we’ll also learn about the very odd activity on the laptop while Hunter was at a rehab clinic. I’m pretty sure Comer and Jordan aren’t interested in digging into those issues.
But, it looks like the “whistleblowers,” House Relief Society, and Weiss (the prosecutor) may have completely screwed up the criminal case against Hunter. His lawyers have filed a set of motions to dismiss that show the type of political prosecution of an ordinary citizen that Ajax could only dream of. Congress absolutely inserted itself into the prosecution of the case, including subpoenaing the prosecutor to testify about a pending case. That’s direct political interference in the case prosecution. And as a direct result of that interference, the prosecution tried to renege on a plea deal, and replaced the two misdemeanor charges with eight felony charges.
Now, when a prosecutor ups the ante like that, it’s supposed to be based on new evidence. But what the “whistleblowers” had to say wasn’t new evidence — they just didn’t like the prosecutor’s charging and decision to plea bargain. So what could be the new evidence.
One interesting claim is that the new evidence came from the CI that’s been arrested and charged for giving the FBI false information fed to him by Russian intelligence. Based on the charging documents, he provided some information right around the time of the change of heart on Hunter’s plea bargain. And, although Weiss appears to have known for a few months about the CI’s lies, he filed charges against him only after Hunter sought discovery into the basis for reneging on the plea bargain and increasing the charges.
If information from the CI was the reason Weiss planned to offer as the reason for the change of heart, things just got kind of awkward for Weiss. Although he filled both cases, he may be a witness in one or both of the cases. What a mess.
The motions also raise some serious questions about the prosecution’s evidence. The FBI failed to take the forensic steps necessary to verify not only what was on the hard drive, but what changes had been made to the laptop over time. And the prosecution keeps changing the source of the evidence it intends to use. It’s the laptop, then it’s the iCloud backup of the laptop. Then it’s “independent sources.” But in its latest filing (the one with the sawdust described as cocaine), the source is identified as the laptop. When asked where on the laptop the various pictures and texts were located, the prosecution admitted that they’d never indexed the laptops contents. No Bates numbers — nothing. That’s just weird.
And there’s more. The prosecution identified pictures as coming from a folder labeled iPhone 11 backup. Just one problem — the iPhone 11 was announced after the laptop allegedly was dropped off at the repair shop.
Maybe it’s all the kind of stuff that looks odd at first glance, but there are perfectly good explanations. If so, I hope we learn what they are.
Meanwhile, another thing you won’t hear the Relief Society talking about: the “whistleblowers” violated federal law by revealing Hunter’s confidential tax information many times to the media. The guy who leaked Trump’s tax return recently got five years. The “whistleblowers” who leaked Hunter’s tax information were and still are government employees with no charges having been filed.
Weaponized DOJ indeed.
Links to all the pleadings and motions can be found on emptywheel.net.
Keep in mind that most of the evidence we are aware of has been developed and controlled by Congressional Republicans. They select the witnesses to testify. They decide which witnesses testify publicly and which are only deposed being closed doors. They decide which documents to release and which to withhold from the public.
Hunter is doing the investigation the Relief Society will never do. Only he’s doing it with a lower profile than the Congressional grandstanders. He’s doing it through discovery and motions in several lawsuits. Besides the criminal case, he has suits against the laptop guy, Giuliani, the IRS and others. And it’s there where the investigation into how Hunter just happened to drop off a laptop that he forgot to pick up, how a legally blind store owner just happened to read the contents of the laptop (because that’s what you do with someone else’s computer, and why copies of data from the laptop just happened to be given to R operatives like Rudy and Steve Bannon, and how this all just happened to happen in the weeks leading up to the presidential election. And we’ll also learn about the very odd activity on the laptop while Hunter was at a rehab clinic. I’m pretty sure Comer and Jordan aren’t interested in digging into those issues.
But, it looks like the “whistleblowers,” House Relief Society, and Weiss (the prosecutor) may have completely screwed up the criminal case against Hunter. His lawyers have filed a set of motions to dismiss that show the type of political prosecution of an ordinary citizen that Ajax could only dream of. Congress absolutely inserted itself into the prosecution of the case, including subpoenaing the prosecutor to testify about a pending case. That’s direct political interference in the case prosecution. And as a direct result of that interference, the prosecution tried to renege on a plea deal, and replaced the two misdemeanor charges with eight felony charges.
Now, when a prosecutor ups the ante like that, it’s supposed to be based on new evidence. But what the “whistleblowers” had to say wasn’t new evidence — they just didn’t like the prosecutor’s charging and decision to plea bargain. So what could be the new evidence.
One interesting claim is that the new evidence came from the CI that’s been arrested and charged for giving the FBI false information fed to him by Russian intelligence. Based on the charging documents, he provided some information right around the time of the change of heart on Hunter’s plea bargain. And, although Weiss appears to have known for a few months about the CI’s lies, he filed charges against him only after Hunter sought discovery into the basis for reneging on the plea bargain and increasing the charges.
If information from the CI was the reason Weiss planned to offer as the reason for the change of heart, things just got kind of awkward for Weiss. Although he filled both cases, he may be a witness in one or both of the cases. What a mess.
The motions also raise some serious questions about the prosecution’s evidence. The FBI failed to take the forensic steps necessary to verify not only what was on the hard drive, but what changes had been made to the laptop over time. And the prosecution keeps changing the source of the evidence it intends to use. It’s the laptop, then it’s the iCloud backup of the laptop. Then it’s “independent sources.” But in its latest filing (the one with the sawdust described as cocaine), the source is identified as the laptop. When asked where on the laptop the various pictures and texts were located, the prosecution admitted that they’d never indexed the laptops contents. No Bates numbers — nothing. That’s just weird.
And there’s more. The prosecution identified pictures as coming from a folder labeled iPhone 11 backup. Just one problem — the iPhone 11 was announced after the laptop allegedly was dropped off at the repair shop.
Maybe it’s all the kind of stuff that looks odd at first glance, but there are perfectly good explanations. If so, I hope we learn what they are.
Meanwhile, another thing you won’t hear the Relief Society talking about: the “whistleblowers” violated federal law by revealing Hunter’s confidential tax information many times to the media. The guy who leaked Trump’s tax return recently got five years. The “whistleblowers” who leaked Hunter’s tax information were and still are government employees with no charges having been filed.
Weaponized DOJ indeed.
Links to all the pleadings and motions can be found on emptywheel.net.
