Hunter update

We all know Hunter Biden’s story – poor little guy was singled out for prosecution, just because he was Joey Biden’s son (and neither was killed by a drunk driver, nor heroically killed in Medal of Honor-worthy combat in Iraq. Or Iran, or Rehobeth Beach, wherever Joe misremembers today.)

As I recall, Hunter’s trial was over the unfortunate coincidence of filing a form 4473 declaring himself a non-drug-user at the same time his autobiography told of him wallowing in drugs and sniffing the first base line at Yankees Stadium – in his defense, Delaware, like most states, does not have a professional baseball team, not even an American league team, so his confusion over that long white line is somewhat excusable. In one sense, though, his is an unusual case – he lied on a 4473 and actually got prosecuted. Better buy lottery tickets if you are hitting those kind of odds.

But his defense team did try an amusing tactic – they tried to get his prosecution dropped because his three felony counts infringed on his Second Amendment rights. Uh, no.

Biden’s defense attorneys wrote in court filings that the recent Supreme Court decision in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen protected the first son from being prosecuted for allegedly lying on a federal form about his drug use to purchase a revolver in 2018.

Judge Maryellen Noreika, a Trump appointee, denied Biden’s initial request. She said the charges on their face were compatible with Bruen, a ruling that relaxed some gun regulations in New York two years ago.

The first son previously asked the district court to dismiss his charges for three other reasons, including that the prosecution was, according to Biden, the result of a Republican pressure campaign and therefore “selective and vindictive.” Noreika denied all three requests, and the appellate court affirmed her denials, once again saying the requests were premature.

Biden’s attorneys also asked this month for the trial to be postponed in part because they were struggling with securing expert witnesses, but Noreika also denied that request.  Washington Examiner

Struggling in securing expert witnesses… I know Whitney Houston and Hunter Thompson are dead, but you would think Keith Richards could be available.

On a more serious note, as predicted earlier, various spurious defenses have cropped up based on the Supreme’s Bruen decision – expect it to become more problematic as lawyers try to manipulate the ‘historic’ phrase further.