Hunter Biden has been found guilty, deservedly.
Hunter Biden was found guilty on Tuesday of lying about his drug addiction on a gun application form five years ago.
First lady Jill Biden was not present in the packed courtroom as the verdict was read, but she reportedly arrived minutes after. President Joe Biden’s brother James and sister-in-law were in the room alongside Biden’s wife, Melissa Cohen Biden. As the verdict was read, AP reported that Hunter Biden, 54, showed little emotion and stared straight ahead.
A sentencing date will be set at a later date, and Biden now faces a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000 for each of the three counts he was convicted on.
I have no doubt that Hunter Biden was one screwed up dude, a long-time drug addict who was rightly held responsible.
I do wonder about proportionate sentencing, though. That was his crime, lying on a gun registration form? And he’s going to get years in prison for it? OK, I’ll keep that in mind when Trump gets some lenient sentence for lying on a tax form.
My main issue would be if any of the Brandon hating gun nuts would be crying in their foul tasting domestic beer if this was a fellow right winger and not Brandon’s spawn. Any gun limiting legislation including that applied to Hunter is commie inspired tyranny. Either gun rights are absolute or are subject to regulation.
Interesting juxtaposition:
https://www.npr.org/2024/06/10/nx-s1-5001231/hunter-biden-guilty
Alongside: https://www.forbes.com/sites/dariosabaghi/2023/08/10/drug-user-cant-be-barred-from-owing-firearms-us-court-rules/
Where are the gun nutter tears for Hunter?
I’m sure the NRA will be along any minute to talk about the inviolability of the Second Amendment.
Actually the NRA has been fairly consistent in claiming that neither mental illness nor drug addiction should preclude gun ownership. Their argument is that no other constitutional right requires mental health, so why should this one? Drug addicts don’t lose their free speech rights or their religious freedom rights or their right to due process or trial by jury. And if pushed, they would probably grudgingly acknowledge that a principled application of that view would protect Hunter Biden as well.
And PZ, I’m a trial attorney and I doubt that he’s going to get 25 years. Maybe 2. He’s a first time non-violent offender with mental health as a mitigating factor.
Watch, the right will insist that Hunter got off with a wrist slap while Trump and his Jan 6 thugs (who SHOULD ALL be hung by the neck until dead) are being horribly persecuted.
I mean, Hunter Biden did it, but so what? What was his intent? What high office does he hold, that he should be held to such a high standard? Who did he harm? Who did he plan to harm?
I suspect the answer to that last question is “himself.” He lied on a form in order to get a gun because he was probably considering suicide. This was a shit charge brought by shit people, which never would have been brought if he weren’t the son of a Democratic president. The intent has always been to punish his father for beating Trump, in hopes of doing what Hunter never got the chance to do with that gun in order to inflict pain on Joe Biden. It’s despicable, and the prosecutors should be disbarred for it.
Trump’s crime, on the other hand, was not merely “lying on a tax form.” Trump committed fraud in an attempt to obtain the office of the presidency through criminal deceit. He succeeded.
In the process of committing the act that he attempted to cover up during the commission of his crime, Trump danced right up to the edge of rape, if not over. He then used his goons to bully Ms. Clifford into silence by insinuating that, should the money prove insufficient to insure her silence, violence would be the next recourse.
Trump also set up patsies to take the fall for him, indicating that he was fully aware that there was nothing legal about his acts. He lied through his teeth about aspect of the crimes, both denying that anything happened at all while simultaneously claiming that everything he did was just fine.
Trump has demonstrated no remorse or recognition of guilt. He’s shown, day after day, that the very idea that he could be held to account at all for any crime by anyone is beneath his contempt. He has attacked officers of the court in the course of legitimate duties as they carried out a legitimate prosecution in the best interests of the people, exactly as they’re supposed to do.
Given the extreme corruption of Trump’s intent and the incalculable harm he’s done, he should be sentenced to the absolute maximum allowed by law for these charges. As I’ve pointed out above, his crimes were neither non-violent nor a minor mistake, and he has zero remorse or respect for the law.
The mainstream media very much wants people to “both sides” this bullshit, but there’s no comparison. Intent and harm are what matter here, and the two defendants aren’t even on the same planet, let alone in the same league.
No. 6, I have to completely disagree with you. If one is serious about keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people who should not have guns, then lying on an application for a gun is a real crime that should have real consequences. If his dad weren’t president this probably never would have come to any prosecutor’s attention, but Hunter Biden really did commit a crime and other people are in fact prosecuted for the same crime.
So. Maybe Hunter Biden and Trump could be cell mates. Now THAT would be hilarious.
They have been less consistent about the effect of black skin on gun ownership. Do you remember their outrage when Philandro Castile, who had a permit to carry a weapon, was gunned down by a cop? Neither do I.
Unlike with Trump’s case, Hunter Biden’s lawyers have a lot of things to pick at on appeal. The judge suppressed use of evidence that the Gun Shop itself lied about the handling of the form that was central to the case (they didn’t actually get two forms of ID and changed the form much later to alter it.) Thus the gun shop owners lied on the stand. Also, the judge didn’t allow challenges to the chain-of-custody questions in the case, especially as far as where emails were obtained from when the laptop went through many hands after Biden’s passwords were known to be compromised. There is lastly the question of whether the plea-agreement was a contract or not.
Ultimately, Biden is likely actually guilty but there is also evidence that the judge prevented from being considered that the special counsel brought the case only after Congressional pressure so there may be a judicial interference challenge.
All these things are long-shots in that criminal law has gotten pretty skewed in favor of prosecutors.
The problem with Biden is he wrote a book where he admitted drug dependencies. If he bought a gun and lied about that, he got caught because he ratted himself out. The moral of the story, don’t do that. It is almost as bad as the little fools that commit some crime and then make a video about their exploits and get busted by the cops. I mean, sorry about that, Hunter, but ……
@ awomanofnoimportance. #7
I’d like to keep guns out of pretty much everyone’s hands, but Hunter Biden’s prosecution is not a step towards accomplishing that. It has nothing to do with any danger he posed to others, either.
That someone is mentally ill or suffering from addiction does not necessarily mean they were a threat to others. He may have posed a threat to himself, but I don’t see that putting sick, possibly suicidal in a place where they will be tortured and sexually assaulted as a matter of course as a good thing. If he had committed a violent crime, or shown some intent to harm others, then it would be appropriate to prosecute him. The prosecution demonstrated no such thing.
“So-and-so committed a crime!” is never a persuasive argument with me. The law in the United States are written such that everyone will fall afoul of them so that essentially anyone can be prosecuted if they become a nuisance to the powerful, or if its convenient to the careers of prosecutors and legislators. As such, they’re rarely enforced in good faith. Hunter Biden’s trial was cruelty for cruelty’s sake.
No. 11, you could make the same argument about a drunk driver who was lucky enough to make it home without killing anyone. And in point of fact, a lot of drunk drivers do safely make it home without killing anyone. A lot of the time, maybe even most of the time, they primarily pose a danger to themselves. But that’s not a reason to not criminalize drunk driving.
If your argument is that the criminal justice system has much wrong with it and there are a lot of people in prison who shouldn’t be there, I don’t disagree. But it’s a big leap from that to say that Hunter Biden is being selectively prosecuted or that the prosecutors should be disbarred. Every school shooting, every workplace shooting, every mall shooting, is a testament to the danger inherent in allowing people with mental health problems to have guns. Society has a huge stake in keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally ill and the addicted, which is the reason he had to fill out the application in the first place. This is not a victimless crime.
I wonder how many gun owners who are gloating over Biden’s son happen to smoke weed. Were they truthful on their forms?
Is alcoholism defined as a drug dependency issue?
For those who want to really get into the weeds of the H Biden case, go to emptywheel.net. Marcy Wheeler has probably covered this in more depth than just about every other news source or blog, with a spotlight on bad-faith moves by prosecutor and judge (both late-term Trump appointees).
Imagine if a Trump son had been charged, let alone convicted, on a gun-related charge. The Second Civil War would already be under way.
@ awomanofnoimportance
Sure, if you want to be wildly disingenuous.
Driving drunk is the moral equivalent of firing a gun wildly around other people. There’s a chance you’ll get lucky and not hit anyone, but it’s still extremely reckless behavior that poses a risk of imminent harm to other people.
Most dumbasses who fire off guns wildly around other people get lucky too. It’s still a serious threat to others, and should be crime.
What Hunter Biden did is the moral equivalent of owning a car while drunk. That shouldn’t be a crime, unless you have a history of driving while drunk, as it poses little risk to others as long as you’re not driving it while intoxicated.
Prosecutors have immense discretion in who to charge, and what to charge them with. It’s extremely rare for the crime charged here to be charged by itself outside of cases where it can be used to take down drug traffickers and violent felons. Hunter Biden is neither, so why was he charged?
Simple. Hunter Biden’s brief possession of a gun was uncovered during the Republican’s revenge spree for investigating and trying of Donald Trump for a few of the many crimes he has committed. They hoped to find evidence of a conspiracy between father and son, and take down Joe Biden that way, but no such evidence ever materialized. So, Republicans went with plan B: break the son to break the father.
This prosecution was an act of malicious spite, and has nothing to do with the safety of anyone. This is Republicans torturing a private citizen in order to torture a Democratic president, because their orange idol was insulted.
…except for the thousands of mass shootings that were committed by people who were not mentally ill. Or the millions of mentally ill people who manage to own dangerous devices, from guns to cars to power tools, without harming anyone with them.
But sure, SOME people who have drug problems or mental illness shouldn’t have guns, or anything more dangerous than a pool noodle. Alas, neither you nor the prosecutors have made any attempt to establish that Hunter Biden was a threat to anyone.
[vucodlak, great response!]
The gun nuts love this because they believe that a “dirty, anti-gun liberal” is being hoisted by their own petard with one of the firearms regulations they support.
I was in a hurry above but the decision cited in the Forbes article shows a shift in 2A jurisprudence that may be confined to limited sections of the US so maybe not Delaware, but the momentum is there, so beware.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/dariosabaghi/2023/08/10/drug-user-cant-be-barred-from-owing-firearms-us-court-rules/
And cheerfulcharlie @14 brings up a good point with alcoholism versus other substances. I would add that weed is on the way toward normalization so…
This CNN article had added more explicit discussion about the limited geography of the ruling:
https://www.cnn.com/2023/08/09/politics/appeals-court-firearms-illegal-drug-users
I myself am somewhat moderate on the 2A. I think there should be limits on types of guns and the ammo if logistically feasible. People should have access for self-defense (without overdone castle doctrine…stand your ground stuff) and hunting (though deer may be an emerging prion hazard, hogs need to be kept in check).
As far as drug users having access I dunno. Addicts to meth and heroin with desperate needs for procuring money may cross a line. Distributors OTOH who possess weapons while committing drug crimes of that nature (ie- illegal trade…dealing) seem a separate issue than a casual user of weed gummies packing heat for hunting or personal protection.
Yet, separately, if someone is a legal weed dealer there are considerations for deterrence of getting robbed. I think I saw some journalistic video a few years ago where the limitations imposed by the feds on legal weed distributors per using the banking system makes how they handle their money a bit precarious. Hiring of ex spec ops and such?
Back to Biden, the jurisprudence shift per drug users aside, the lying on forms thing is a definite sticking point that would still do him in.
Vucodlak, guns are inherently dangerous and need to be regulated. There is a compelling interest in keeping them out of the hands of the mentally unstable. That more than justifies criminal penalties for lying during the application process. If you honestly do not grasp that point, then I can’t help you.
As far as Hunter Biden being selectively prosecuted because he’s a Biden, I spent ten years defending criminal defendants who were mostly black, impoverished and never had any real chance in life. Every one of them would have killed to trade their upbringing for Hunter Biden’s. A man of mediocre talents, he grew up a spoiled rich kid with more money, privilege and opportunity than he could ever use. And he threw it away on drugs and wild living. Yes, he also had sorrow in his life — the loss of his mother and brother — but still, he pissed away a life that others could only dream of. So now I’m supposed to feel sorry for him?
For most of his life, being a Biden was a massive asset. This one time it turned into a liability. Who said life was fair? But he could have avoided all of this by either not buying a gun when he was legally not entitled to, or not lying on the form. You’re right that it only came to light because of spiteful Republicans, but it did come to light. Your choices in life really do come back to bite you sometimes.
@7. awomanofnoimportance : “Maybe Hunter Biden and Trump could be cell mates. Now THAT would be hilarious.”
That’d be cruel and unusual punishment for Hunter. So no.
Put Trump in solitary I’d say. Force him to spend time with himself only. He deserves that and it might actually make him face some truths.
@cheerfulcharlie – 11 June 2024 at 5:34 pm : “Is alcoholism defined as a drug dependency issue?”
Caffine? Nicotine? The old question of defining what exactly is a drug or an addiction..
The US of A would be well advised to emulate some of the European nations (Holland? Denmark? Iceland?) and treat drug addiction as a health issue rather than a criminal one.
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Aussie ABC had a segment on the Hunter case (before the verdict obvs) among other things noting why Hunter’s then girlfriend tried to get rid of the gun :
Source : https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-11/jury-begins-deliberations-in-hunter-biden-gun-case/103966052 (Transcript.)
Both strike me as very good reasons why Hunter Biden should NOT have had the gun – indeed why anybody who doesn’t genuinely need a gun shouldn’t have a gun. Most of the rest of the world – certainly most of the OECD nations think the USA’s gun laws are a sad, toxic unfunny joke and not great as an understatement.
OTOH, I agree with what #6 vucodlak wrote :
Yes, Hunter broke the law but in a minor way and, yes, was singled out for doing what I suspect is actually a pretty common crime. He deserves to be found guilty and to have a very light penalty commensurate with that crime. Fine him, give him community service maybe but not jail.
Trump, OTOH, has a pattern of law breaking – of holding himself above the law and boasting openly about it and trying to undermine the system of Justice and as well as the Electoral system and displayed his contempt for both and for the USA in general with the crime that made him a convicted felon. He’s shown no remorse and attacked the Judge in a way that anyone else would already long since be behind bars for Contempt for. In Convicted Felon Trump’s case, yeah, throw the book
at him and as I started this with – put him in solitary for as long as the law allows.Maximum snetence. No parole. Once his other cases have been done, and hopefully he’ll rightly be convicted there too life in jail for him please. In disgrace and out of a position to harm others. ideally starting with being remanded in custody from July 11th onwards with no media and visitor access than any other felon.
StevoR @22
Is it a good idea for someone amped up on way too much espresso and highly irritable to have a concealed carry firearm handy? May as well be Scarface with his cocaine pile.
@ awomanofnoimportance, #21
As I said back in comment 11:
How does choosing to prosecute one man out of the who-knows-how-many who regularly break this law serve the interests of gun control? You can’t claim that they’re making an example of HB as a warning to others when there is no evidence that these prosecutors have any interest in prosecuting any of those other scofflaws for the same violation.
This is not about gun control. This is not even about keeping guns out of Hunter Biden’s hands, as he possessed the weapon in question for less than a fortnight, and no evidence has been presented that he has acquired further guns. This is about punishing his father for the crime of beating Donald Trump in 2020, and getting revenge for the various criminal prosecutions of Trump.
While I detest cruelty to anyone, I have no strong personal feelings one way or the other about Hunter Biden, nor do I care how you feel about him. It isn’t relevant to my argument that this was a malicious and politically-motivated prosecution that has far more to do with who his father is than with anything HB has done.
And that’s the problem. Because he’s Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden was prosecuted for crime that these prosecutors otherwise wouldn’t have wasted a moment’s time on, all in hopes of causing his father pain and associated the name “Biden” with criminality. That’s not about anyone’s safety, anymore than it’s about ensuring that everyone is equal in the eyes of the law (quite the opposite, obviously).
It’s a flagrant violation of legal principles to comb through someone’s life for something, anything you can charge them with because you want to hurt their father, to say nothing of basic human rights.
This is absolute, unmitigated bullshit. The investigation into Hunter Biden did not begin because someone suspected he might have violated federal gun laws. The investigation began because his father ran against Trump in 2020, and it kicked into high gear when Joe Biden won the election. If prosecutors didn’t get him on this charge, they would have found something else. It was a malicious, politically-motivated prosecution from the beginning.
In this case, the “choice” that came back to bite Hunter Biden was having Joe Biden for a father.
Isn’t it a right-wing trope to blame the parents to mis-raising kids?
In this case, I’ll actually go there. Hunter was clearly not well brought up. Perhaps he wasn’t given enough attention by a father who was too busy chasing power and worrying about his dead brother, to spend a little time with him, teaching him that drugs and alcohol are fun but limiting, and if you take cheap money from Soviet Bloc oligarchs, they’re going to eventually bring complications.
I’m not impressed by Hunter and I don’t particularly care what stupid things he’s done. I’m not particularly impressed by Joe, either. Or the republicans. Fuck them all, I say.
@ ^ Marcus Ranum : I doubt anyone is especially impressed by Hunter Biden. I’m not. He’s not a particularly impressive human being from all I’ve heard. OTOH, he ‘s not the POTUS not running to be nor after any high office as far as I’m aware.
I don’t really care that much about him but I do think going after political rivals family members is a pretty disgusting and unfair act.
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So, um, what about notorious reputed coke-head Don Jr? Doesn’t he have a gun given he’s apparently being hunting quite a bit? Anyone know what he put on his gun licence form?
Geese /ganders ..
So long as Hunter was guilty then justice was served. Quit whining. So long as the guilty get convicted, the republicans will lose overall.
Vucodlak:
“How does choosing to prosecute one man out of the who-knows-how-many who regularly break this law serve the interests of gun control?”
The same way prosecuting anyone for any crime at all serves the interests of whatever social policy that crime is a crime for. It serves as a deterrent, and vindicates the rule of law. Everyone thinking about lying on a gun application now knows that prosecution is at least a possibility. Any time you break the law you take the risk that it may be discovered and you may be prosecuted.
“The investigation into Hunter Biden did not begin because someone suspected he might have violated federal gun laws. The investigation began because his father ran against Trump in 2020, and it kicked into high gear when Joe Biden won the election.”
You keep saying that as if it were relevant. Even if true, so what?
I disapprove of selective prosecution as much as the next person. But the prosecutor’s motive is normally not relevant. You either broke the law or you didn’t. I know from your earlier comments that that’s not an argument you find convincing, but I really don’t see how to have a working justice system otherwise. If we adopted that as the standard, then every criminal trial would be about the prosecutor’s motives rather than the defendant’s guilt. You want Trump being able to raise those issues when he’s on trial? Imagine the circus if that were a legally valid defense. Any minority defendant could argue, often with great plausibility, that the police don’t like him. So none of them get prosecuted either?
So on this issue we just disagree. I think justice was served; you don’t. I’m sorry it didn’t work out the way you think it should have.
Perspective from Europe: Hunter Biden has bee…ZZZZZZZZZ.
Election: Bitte nicht den horror-clown!
Ok this stuff is way outside my wheelhouse, but the reversal at the level of 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals above may reach the Supremes and maybe they will let their disdain for drug use override their 2A fundamentalism? Who knows. They seem to be waiting on another case to resolve before coming back to this one, which had promoted a drug user’s right to bear arms.
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/23/23-376/284275/20231005143926385_Daniels%20Pet%2010.4.pdf
[I had to copy and paste this from screenshots so the character rendering, spelling and other stuff may have gotten mangled]
I’m at a loss for where this case is at currently or where it is headed.
See: https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/23-376.html
@ erik333, #27
Thank you for that reminder that many (perhaps most?) people neither know nor care to learn the difference between order maintenance and justice, at least until their ignorance bites them in the ass. But hey, maybe you’ll be one of the lucky ones, right? After all, it’s not your ass on the line (this time), and surely that leopard won’t still be hungry after he finishes eating all those other people’s faces.
But, if it is, I’ll be sure to remember your preferences and ignore your whining. To paraphrase a famous civil rights activist: Injustice anywhere is a threat to my TV time.
@ awomanofnoimportance, #28
This case serving as a deterrent is predicated on the law being enforced with some semblance of regularity and fairness. As I have already pointed out several times, this is an extremely unusual use of the law, one motivated strictly be political concerns and spite. The prosecutors have zero inclination to start trawling through the millions of these forms that are filled out each year, looking for people who may have lied on them. This case might serve as a deterrent to family members of high-ranking Democratic officials, but that’s an extremely tiny group and, to my knowledge, not one overly given to the acts of mass gun violence you claim to be concerned about.
Selectively applying the “rule of law” to punish the families of political enemies undermines it. Using the law this way is a perversion of justice, and does nothing to enhance public safety.
If the fact that it’s written on the fucking forms that lying on them is a federal offense doesn’t clue them in that “prosecution is at least a possibility,” then a politically-motivated hit job sure ain’t going to do it. Everyone and their cousin knows that this happened because of who Hunter Biden is related to, and not because of anything he did.
Okay, I will try to explain this one last time. Let’s start by looking at what you claim to be concerned about:
From your #7
#12
#21
Before I go any further, I’m going to point out AGAIN that many (most, as far as I can tell) mass shootings are not carried out by “mentally unstable” people. They are commonly a result of domestic abuse incidents, gang activity, arguments that got out of hand, or are ideologically-motivated. “Violent asshole” is not a mental illness. Further, Hunter Biden was not prosecuted for lying about his mental stability, so it’s kind of weird that you keep bringing that up, since you’re suddenly so concerned about keeping to facts relevant to this case. The charge was that he lied about drug use, which is not in and of itself a sign of mental illness or instability.
If you believe that this case furthers the cause of keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people, then you’re gonna need to explain what you mean by “dangerous people,” because neither you nor the prosecutors have thus far bothered to explain how Hunter Biden was dangerous.
See, I don’t think that he should have had a gun, but that’s because I don’t think the vast majority of people should have guns. I don’t think most people are responsible enough to possess machines whose primary purpose is to kill. I haven’t, however, seen any evidence that Hunter Biden posed a significant threat to others. Himself, perhaps, but putting someone in prison because they may have been suicidal is a bit like stretching someone on the rack because they had a backache.
Would anyone have cared that Hunter Biden lied on this form, if he weren’t Joe Biden’s son? No. Would any prosecutor have bothered to take up the case of someone who own lied on a form to own a gun for eleven days, six years ago, before it was thrown away, unused for anything, if that someone wasn’t the son of a Democratic president against whom the prosecutor had been tapped to fulfill a Republican vendetta? No.
The entire problem with this case is that it was NEVER about upholding the law. The Republicans who started this entire process have demonstrated time and again that they don’t give a damn about the law. They tried to overthrow our entire system of laws not even four years ago, for fuck’s sake. This entire trial was yet another instance of Republicans selectively enforcing the law as a weapon against someone they hate, period. If you can’t see how that’s deeply unjust, and a danger to everyone’s rights and freedom, then I can think of nothing more I can say to convince you.
Lying on gun forms while being drunk or high is like one of the hogs favorite things to do. So if this somehow comes back around to bite them, it won’t, it would be really funny.