Hunter Biden is on trial for allegedly buying a gun and lying on the gun application form. This happened in 2018. It was covered up for years, including allegations that Secret Service agents retrieved the gun from a trash barrel. Apparently, his girlfriend at the time, the widow of his brother Beau, was so concerned about him having a gun that she threw it in the trash. No one bothered to tell the police.
The facts are pretty clear. He did buy a gun. He was a drug addict actively involved in smoking crack. He was a lawyer, so the excuse that he didn’t understand the form is ridiculous. But no one was hurt, and most other rich people caught doing something like this would have walked.
The real problem here for Hunter is the coverup. Nothing happened until a Special Prosecutor was assigned. Even then the Special Prosecutor negotiated a plea deal regarding this, but the judge rejected it because it may have given Hunter immunity for almost anything. My guess is that if he had just pled guilty to a misdemeanor the judge would have accepted the deal and ended this. But instead, it was Hunter’s attorneys who turned an obvious plea deal into a trial.
It seems absurd to charge someone for illegally buying a weapon that was never used over five years ago. It would be easy to see a jury voting for acquittal, regardless of the facts, for exactly that reason. But that may not happen for several reasons. One is that the defense attorneys are trying desperately to win this case by discrediting the information and pretending that Hunter Biden wasn’t doing crack at this exact moment. In my opinion this falls into the category of “me thinks thee does protest too much.” In addition, the attendance in court of Jill Biden could backfire. Some jury members may consider this to be an obvious attempt to prejudice the jury. It doesn’t help that Joe Biden is so flagrantly self-righteous about the need for gun control legislation.
If I were on that jury, I would probably vote for conviction, but send the judge a note recommending an alternative to prison time. If the prosecution insists on demanding that Hunter go to prison, they may lose because of that.
Another problem for Hunter is that if you want to look at a prosecution for purely political purposes, well we just saw that. The jury there didn’t hesitate to find Trump guilty, without regard to the facts and the evidence. In addition, a lot of people are loudly demanding that Trump be sent to prison for a non-crime.
The result is that this is impossible to predict. Presenting Hunter Biden as an innocent drug addict is complicated by his extravagant lifestyle, his spending $50,000 on “something.” His brags about drug abuse in memos and, well, the pictures etc., from the laptop. Some of the members of the jury apparently have relatives with drug addition problems. But odds are they didn’t have $50,000 in loose change available to buy their way out. It is impossible to judge what percentage of compassion they will feel for Hunter Biden or possible outrage at what he has already gotten away with. Either way, this is not exactly going to help the Biden campaign. Even an acquittal won’t do much and a conviction would be a real nightmare. It is a lose-lose situation either way.
In the meantime, the airways are flooded with gun smoke. It was a great TV show, not so great in real life.
TDM