Confirmed: David Weiss Only Got a Gun Crime iCloud Warrant 81 Days after Indicting Hunter Biden
As I laid out here and here, David Weiss’ response to Hunter Biden’s motion to dismiss on selective and vindictive prosecution grounds seemed to rely on a warrant that post-dated the September 14, 2023 indictment charging Hunter with three gun crimes.
Here’s the language in question.
In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant’s Apple iCloud account. 2 In response to that warrant, in September 2019, Apple produced backups of data from various of the defendant’s electronic devices that he had backed up to his iCloud account. 3 Investigators also later came into possession of the defendant’s Apple MacBook Pro, which he had left at a computer store. A search warrant was also obtained for his laptop and the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple. 4 Law enforcement also later obtained a search warrant to search the defendant’s electronic evidence for evidence of federal firearms violations and to seize such data. 5
2 District of Delaware Case No. 19-234M and a follow up search warrant, District of Delaware Case Number 20-165M.
3 The electronic evidence referenced in this section was produced to the defendant in discovery in advance of the deadline to file motions.
4 District of Delaware Case No. 19-309M
5 District of Delaware Case No. 23-507M. [my emphasis]
I asked his spox whether that could possibly be true, but he declined to comment.
So I wrote a letter to Judge Maryellen Noreika seeking to unseal the dockets as judicial records, which would reveal the date.
Judge Noreika ordered the two sides to weigh in.
ORAL ORDER re 73 Letter: IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, on or before close of business on January 26, 2024, the parties shall provide the Court with their respective positions on the request to unseal the dockets and warrants referenced in the letter 73 . ORDERED by Judge Maryellen Noreika on 1/25/2024. (mdb) (Entered: 01/25/2024)
Both sides have now responded (Abbe Lowell, Weiss), stating they do not oppose the request, so the dockets and some information about warrant scope should soon be unsealed.
But Weiss’ letter confirmed my suspicions:
That last warrant, 23-507M, is the only one he described to authorize searches for gun crimes. He didn’t obtain that warrant until December 4 of last year.
David Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden for going on six years; he indicted the gun crimes just days before the statute of limitations expired on them.
And in all that time, Weiss had (at least per his description) never obtained a warrant to search the iCloud content he first started getting in August 2019 until December 4, 2023, 81 days after he indicted.
To be very clear: there’s absolutely no reason to believe that the December 4 warrant in any way failed to show probable cause (though the laptop may have tainted the July 10, 2020 warrant for other crimes).
Rather, this totally undermines David Weiss’ arguments about why he reneged on his diversion agreement.
In his filing, he claimed he had been considering charging those crimes for some time before he reneged on the diversion agreement. But if that were true — if it were remotely true he was seriously considering charging the gun crimes before Jim Jordan demanded he do so — then he would have obtained this warrant years before, probably in the 2020 warrant or at the very least after Hunter’s book was published in April 2021.
Update: Corrected Judge Noreika’s first name.
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Thank you.
I follow a few ‘legal issues’ podcasts, but I would never feel fully informed without this blog.
You are Citizen Sleuth.
It seems to me that even a conservative judge would like to reinstate the diversion agreement and get this case off the docket. If not, since Hunter Biden now has Sec Serv protection and no need for a firearm, its hard to see a jury convicting him.
This is excellent journalism. This was very easy to follow.
Wow!, Marcy!
Nice one, Marcy. (I wonder if the judge reads your incisive accounts?)
All this though only further illustrates the gulf between the everyday and legal worlds. There’s very natural strong legal reluctance to furnish a near-literal “get out of jail free” card to every weaselly miscreant about to go down, but any ordinary Joe who is paying proper attention to this here prosecution can readily see that it’s everything that Lowell is claiming. It’s not even as though Trump himself isn’t very clear; he proudly boasts that he will suborn the bejasus out of the DOJ and everything else besides, if he only gets another seat on his throne. Why do so many still believe it’s all just empty rhetoric…?
Marcy Wheeler is a goddess.
“I am unanimous in that”
~Mrs. Slocombe
Are You Being Served
Great show! I loved Mr. Humphries (John Inman)
Hunter really should send you a painting.
Excellent suggestion!
Well, how about that!
You wrote a wonderful letter, too!
As you know, I’m not a fan of Judge Noreika’s previous HB rulings.
And I eagerly await her future rulings.
Many thanks for your letter’s precision.
One might even suggest that it was a “perfect” letter.
Btw, it’s Friday!
Search youtube:
1-26-24 nicole sandler show
I have to wonder whether Lowell can get the gun charge stricken since there was no search evidence to support it when it was filed.
OT: 83 million dollars for Defendant-1.
WhoooHooo!!! Congrats.
I love sharing what I learn here with the few skeptics I mix with. The regular press has been selling the sex and while they know it, being able to (somewhat) explaining the laptop(s) and chain of command has helped. But this is simple. Folks don’t like unlawful snoops.
Thank you.
Those effing slimeballs. Great catch!
EW, I don’t know how public the phone number attached to your letter is, but I was surprised to see it unredacted. Is the letter docketed itself now, or can you overscore the number in some way? I’d hate to see the Biden-crime-family vultures doxxing you for throwing truth-sand in the gears of their operation.
Doxx her in Ireland? I would think that trump would only draw unwanted attention to the facts truthfully presented here on EmptyWheel.
BTW when did the edit button come back?
Doxxing isn’t just about revealing someone’s physical home/work/school/family’s/etc. address(es) to facilitate hate-mail, picketing, stalking, swatting etc.
It’s also about revealing someone’s home/work/school/family’s/etc. phone #s , email addresses, social media profile handles, etc. so as to deluge the target with threatening emails, social media DM’s, IT attacks (DDOS attacks, hacking, identity theft etc.) and yes, good old fashioned phone calls, text messages (SMS+app-based) and voicemails. Including purposely calling in the middle of the night, which would be easy to do with the time difference between Ireland & the USA. So it’s absolutely possible to Doxx someone virtually/remotely, even if they live in another country that likely doesn’t have many local Trump supporters to heed the call for IRL harassment, or where it’d be too expensive for most ppl to send snail-hate-mail to.
All of which I’m sure Dr. Wheeler is well aware of, having been the target of MAGAs ire in the past… so that said, its a valid question to ask if leaving her phone # exposed was an oversight or not.
Makes me wonder whether Weiss realized what he was revealing when he replied to the judge’s request for replies from the parties by saying in essence “we have no problem with unredacting this information.”
Talk about shooting yourself in the foot (so to speak)! Either he is a bad investigator (“Let’s wait more than 5 years before we look inside this place for evidence . . .”) or a bad lawyer (“Let’s file charges and *then* look for the evidence to support them . . .”).
Or, of course, as always, both could be true — and likely are.
Weiss is obviously a political hack here, taking an opportunistic attack for political reasons as being more important than wrapping up this case. 81 days after an indictment he seems to be looking for more evidence in a charged case? What’s with that?
During discovery motions Lowell requested actual proof that Hunter was using drugs on the day when he filled out that form. Looks like Weiss in his haste forgot an important item.
I don’t know about partisan hack, but I suspect he’s being leaned on pretty hard. “Former colleagues described Weiss as an independent-minded prosecutor.” https://www.reuters.com/legal/who-is-david-weiss-us-prosecutor-hunter-biden-case-2023-06-20/
Whether his sequencing glitch reflects being a hack or being pushed, the kewl part is EW’s persistent and detail-oriented approach to putting together the (very interesting) pieces.
Not directly relevant, but contrastive: does anybody remember Corey Lewandowski bringing a loaded gun in a laundry bag to the House office building (and getting caught)? Charges eventually dismissed. I just accidentally discovered that today, chasing down some links in an unrelated story.
I don’t know much about guns, but doesn’t everyone take them to the laundry when the gun needs cleaning?
Marcy told the Judge [and Weiss] straight out what she was interested in:
Charging someone before a search warrants to iCloud info reveals the infraction. But it just so happens that the charge is not some random hit or miss since it is at least supported somewhat by the info found in iCloud.
Doesn’t this imply that the prosecutors were accessing the iCloud info before? Illegally?
A Politico article says the gun is in Hunter’s book, along with descriptions of him using drugs around the same time, that is, they didn’t need to illegally access his records to make a connection, they just went out and bought the book. Would a book give them enough probable cause to ask for a warrant to help confirm or disconfirm? I’m not a lawyer so I can’t say. I suspect they might need some corroboration independent of the book, like a witness, but again, I don’t know.
Title of the article is: “Lessons learned from Hunter Biden: Careful what you put in your memoir.”
There’s a different gun in the book. This one isn’t in it. There’s a ton of discussion about having been an addict. But there are only two lines about failing to get clean in this period in the book.
I THINK they actually were going to rely on Hunter’s colloquy from the failed plea, where he admitted it. And then when Lowell said he was going to contest that, it created a catch-22, because it would prove they were relying on a benefit gotten in exchange for something.
Oh, interesting.
I have to point out that when people say Merrick Garland should have indicted Trump immediately after the 1/6 coup attempt, then gathered evidence later, this is the sort of shit show you end up with. [I think a lot of judicial stuff should move faster though]