David Weiss’ Indict First, Seek Warrants Later Ethic
I want to further elaborate on a point in this post: It appears that David Weiss did not obtain a reliable warrant for the most showy evidence in his response motion to Hunter’s selective and vindictive prosecution claim until after he indicted Hunter for 3 gun felonies — indeed, he appears not to have obtained it until after Abbe Lowell asked for this kind of evidence.
I think it likely that, as a result, David Weiss will technically be relying on evidence from the laptop he obtained from John Paul Mac Isaac, which (as I’ll show in a follow-up), may be a particularly acute problem for the period in question.
I’ve put a timeline below, relying on Weiss’ response motions on selective prosecution and discovery. Because Weiss did not provide dates for any of the warrants described in the former, I’ve noted the closest unsealed dockets before and after each warrant docket included to approximate the dates for those warrants.
The gun indictment, which Weiss obtained just before the statute of limitations expired, did not provide any proof that Hunter Biden was an addict when he purchased a gun on October 12, 2018. It simply stated, for each of three charges, that he knew he was.
[T]he defendant, Robert Hunter Biden, provided a written statement on Form 4473 certifying he was not an unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious.
It’s true that on July 26, 2023, Hunter Biden admitted he was in treatment for addiction in Fall 2018 — but that admission was obtained with the promise of a diversion agreement — a point that Abbe Lowell noted in his motion to dismiss on immunity grounds.
Hunter was arraigned — initially with a 30-day deadline for pretrial motions — on October 3, 2023. At the hearing, Lowell said that he was going to ask for an evidentiary hearing, which (along with his TV appearances) would have alerted Weiss that he would seek to dismiss the indictment.
By Weiss’ own admission, he didn’t provide any discovery until October 12, four days after Abbe Lowell asked. He describes that that initial production, of just 350 pages, included “statements of the defendant including his admissions that he was addicted to crack cocaine and possessed a firearm in 2018,” electronic evidence from Hunter’s iCloud account, as well as “search warrants related to evidence the government may use in its case-in-chief.”
On October 12, 2023, the government provided to the defendant a production of materials consisting of over 350 pages of documents as well as additional electronic evidence from the defendant’s Apple iCloud account and a copy of data from the defendant’s laptop. This production included search warrants related to evidence the government may use in its case-in-chief in the gun case, statements of the defendant including his admissions that he was addicted to crack cocaine and possessed a firearm in 2018, and law enforcement reports related to the gun investigation. [my emphasis]
But he doesn’t say he provided all the warrants behind the evidence the government will use in its case-in-chief.
As I’ve noted, Hunter’s book is 272 pages long, so if Weiss included the book in that initial production, then there were only 78 other pages, to include warrants and law enforcement reports pertaining to the gun.
Among the things Lowell asked for in that initial discovery request was information “reflecting Mr. Biden’s sobriety in 2018” and “information reflecting Mr. Biden’s treatment for any substance or alcohol abuse in 2018.”
Weiss described that he provided evidence about payments to rehab programs in 2018 (this will include Keith Ablow!!!) on November 1.
On November 1, 2023, the government provided a production of materials to the defendant that was over 700,000 pages and largely consisted of documents obtained during an investigation into whether the defendant timely filed and paid his taxes and committed tax evasion. These documents included information of the defendant’s income and payments to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs in 2018, the same year in which the defendant possessed the firearm while addicted to controlled substances.
Weiss didn’t describe providing any more information about Hunter’s addiction or sobriety.
Weiss didn’t describe providing any more discovery — and didn’t describe providing any more warrants at all — until January 9, almost a month after Lowell’s deadline for pretrial motions, including motions to suppress.
In advance of his initial appearance on the tax indictment, the government made a production of materials to the defendant on January 9, 2024, which included over 500,000 pages of documents and consisted of additional information related to the tax investigation.
Yet, by Weiss’ own admission, he never had a warrant to access iCloud content for gun charges — as opposed to tax and foreign influence charges — until he got it with District of Delaware Case No. 23-507M. If my approximations below are correct, Weiss didn’t obtain a warrant to search Hunter’s iCloud content for gun charges until sometime between November 30 and December 4 of last year. As noted previously, I asked Weiss’ spox to correct me if this was an error, but they declined to comment beyond what is in the filing.
Weiss is wildly squirrely about all this, as I’ll show. But he basically admits that he’s relying on that warrant — which it appears he obtained over two months after indicting Hunter — for the only evidence in this motion that shows Hunter’s drug use during the period he possessed the gun (and as noted, Weiss doesn’t describe when in 2023 the FBI first decided to send the gun to a lab for testing, but he admits it wasn’t until 2023).
Prior to October 12, 2018 (the date of the gun purchase), the defendant took photos of crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia on his phone.
Also prior to his gun purchase, the defendant routinely sent messages about purchasing drugs.
On October 13, 2018, and October 14, 2018 (the day after and two days after he purchased the firearm), the defendant messaged his girlfriend about meeting a drug dealer and smoking crack. For example, on October 13, 2018, the defendant messaged her and stated, “. . . I’m now off MD Av behind blue rocks stadium waiting for a dealer named Mookie.” The next day, the defendant messaged her and stated, “I was sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th street and Rodney.”
On October 23, 2018 (the day his then-girlfriend discarded his firearm), the defendant messaged his girlfriend and asked, “Did you take that from me [girlfriend]?” Later that evening, after his interactions with law enforcement, he messaged her about the “[t]he fucking FBI” and asked her, “so what’s my fault here [girlfriend] that you speak of. Owning a gun that’s in a locked car hidden on another property? You say I invade your privacy. What more can I do than come back to you to try again. And you do this???? Who in their right mind would trust you would help me get sober.” In response, the girlfriend stated “I’m sorry, I just want you safe. That was not safe. And it was open unlocked and windows down and the kids search your car. You have lost your mind hunter. I’m sorry I handled it poorly today but you are in huge denial about yourself and about that reality that I just want you safe. You run away like a child and blame me for your shit . . .”
Elsewhere in this response, Weiss quotes liberally from Hunter’s book, but the book really doesn’t say much about Hunter’s state in the 11 days he owned the gun.
I had returned that fall of 2018, after my most recent relapse in California, with the hope of getting clean through a new therapy and reconciling with Hallie.
Here’s how Weiss — in the paragraph immediately preceding this evidence — describes how — after Delaware cops had already seized the gun — investigators obtained evidence showing the purchase was illegal:
C. While Investigating the Defendant for Tax Violations, Investigators Obtained Evidence Showing His Prior Gun Purchase Was Illegal Because He Was Addicted to Controlled Substances
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
Weiss says he first obtained a warrant for Hunter’s iCloud account in August 2019, but that was just for tax violations. He doesn’t describe the temporal scope of that warrant. Joseph Ziegler predicated the investigation off a 2018 Suspicious Activity Report tied to payments to sex workers, but he only got approval for a criminal investigation by claiming — a claim that the tax indictment debunks — that no taxes were paid for his 2014 Burisma payments, so it’s possible that initial warrant only focused on 2014 and 2015 (particularly given that Hunter couldn’t have committed a tax crime in 2018 until October 2019, after that warrant was obtained in August 2019).
In a footnote but not in the text of the paragraph, Weiss mentions, oh, by the way, we got a follow-up warrant in 2020; he doesn’t provide the date, but it would have been between July 9 and 16, 2020. According to Gary Shapley, investigators obtained 2017 texts with that 2020 warrant — which again may suggest that Weiss didn’t obtain later content until after obtaining it first on the laptop.
Back in the main text, Weiss describes obtaining the laptop [bum bum BUM!!!]. But he claims that what he got from the laptop was “largely duplicative” of what he “already obtained” with the iCloud warrant.
Then, finally, he admits he never got a warrant to search the iCloud (he’s silent about the scope of the laptop warrants, but Ziegler only talked about tax and foreign influence peddling scopes) for evidence of gun crimes until that warrant that, if my approximation is correct, was after the indictment and after Weiss claimed to have provided all discovery for the gun crimes.
Note, significantly, that in a footnote Weiss said, “The electronic evidence referenced in this section was produced to the defendant in discovery in advance of the deadline to file motions,” but doesn’t say anything about when he provided that (apparent) December 2023 warrant to Lowell? It’s not clear whether Weiss included this among the iCloud and laptop material provided on October 12, or among the 700,000 pages provided on November 1.
But whichever it is, if I’m right about the timing of that gun crime warrant, Weiss did not yet have a warrant to access that material for the already obtained indictment yet. Lowell had the content, but not the notice that Weiss was going to use it for the gun crime.
And all this is before you consider the possibility that the second warrant, obtained in 2020, relied on the laptop (something that is consistent with Shapley’s testimony). If that’s the case, then Weiss would have a whole slew of other problems — not least, that John Paul Mac Isaac claims FBI was accessing the laptop before the date that Shapley says they got a warrant.
Update: Let me clarify why this matters. There’s no question that there was probable cause for gun crimes available for a warrant affidavit last year. And it is fairly common for prosecutors to get new warrants for content they’ve already seized; SDNY did so against both Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani, for example.
One reason this is problematic, though, is the timing. Weiss is arguing that he always intended to prosecute gun crimes, but he appears not to have gotten a warrant until after he charged it, which hurts his argument that he always intended to prosecute it (as does the delay in sending the gun to the lab). So it could hurt Weiss’ chances to win these motions.
Unless one of three things happened, David Weiss would be able to use this data at trial.
- If the warrant to obtain the 2018 data was the warrant obtained in 2020 and it relied on stuff from the laptop, the laptop may have tainted the 2020 warrant. There are several ways the laptop may have tainted the 2020 warrant, one of which is JPMI’s claim that FBI was accessing the laptop before they got a warrant.
- As noted, Weiss is really squirrely about when — or even if — it gave Abbe Lowell the warrant for this material. If they gave it to him after the deadline for these motions to suppress, it would mean they’ve deprived him of the ability to file a motion to suppress.
Timeline
August 22, 2019 [19-mj-232]
August 2019: Weiss first obtains iCloud data, for unstated dates, limited to tax crimes [19-mj-234]
In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant’s Apple iCloud account. 2
2 District of Delaware Case No. 19-234M
August 27, 2019: [19-mj-235]
October 16, 2019: Mac Isaac’s father first contacts FBI [Shapley’s notes]
December 3, 2019: Ziegler first starts drafting search warrant for laptop
December 6, 2019: [19-mj-302]
December 9, 2019: FBI takes possession of laptop; per John Paul Mac Isaac, “Matt” called several times, asking for help accessing the machine, and revealing “we” had already tried to boot it up.
“Hi, it’s Matt again. So, we have a power supply and a USB-C cable, but when we boot up, I can’t get the mouse or keyboard to work.”
I couldn’t believe it—they were trying to boot the machine!
“The keyboard and trackpad were disconnected due to liquid damage. If you have a USB-C–to–USB-A adaptor, you should be able to use any USB keyboard or mouse,” I said. He related this to Agent DeMeo and quickly hung up.
Matt called yet again about an hour later.
“So this thing won’t stay on when it’s unplugged. Does the battery work?”
I explained that he needed to plug in the laptop and that once it turned on, the battery would start charging. I could sense his stress and his embarrassment at having to call repeatedly for help. [my emphasis]
December 12, 2019: Obtain OEO approval for warrant
December 13, 2019: Obtain warrant for laptop [date per Shapley]
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 District of Delaware Case No. 19-309M.
December 13, 2019: [19-mj-311]
December 14, 2019: Will Levi sends Bill Barr text stating, “Laptop on way to you”
July 9, 2020: [20-mj-162]
July 2020: Weiss obtains follow-up warrant, by description still limited to tax crimes (but almost certainly also including foreign influence peddling) [20-mj-165]
In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant’s Apple iCloud account. 2
2 and a follow up search warrant, District of Delaware Case Number 20-165M.
July 16, 2020: [20-mj-177]
ND, 2023: FBI first does lab tests on gun and finds cocaine residue
September 14, 2023: Gun indictment
October 3, 2023: Arraignment
October 8, 2023: Request for discovery
On October 8, 2023, the defendant made a request for discovery under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 16.
October 12, 2023: First discovery production
On October 12, 2023, the government provided to the defendant a production of materials consisting of over 350 pages of documents as well as additional electronic evidence from the defendant’s Apple iCloud account and a copy of data from the defendant’s laptop. This production included search warrants related to evidence the government may use in its case-in-chief in the gun case, statements of the defendant including his admissions that he was addicted to crack cocaine and possessed a firearm in 2018, and law enforcement reports related to the gun investigation. [my emphasis]
November 1, 2023: Discovery production 2
On November 1, 2023, the government provided a production of materials to the defendant that was over 700,000 pages and largely consisted of documents obtained during an investigation into whether the defendant timely filed and paid his taxes and committed tax evasion. These documents included information of the defendant’s income and payments to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs in 2018, the same year in which the defendant possessed the firearm while addicted to controlled substances.
November 15, 2023: Follow-up request for discovery regarding Trump’s interference and Brady channel
November 15, 2023: Abbe Lowell requests subpoenas for Trump, Bill Barr, and others
November 30, 2023: [23-mj-504]
ND, 2023:
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
5 District of Delaware Case No. 23-507M
December 4, 2023: [23-mj-508]
December 7, 2023: Tax indictment
December 11, 2023: Hunter’s motions due
ND: Third discovery production
In advance of his initial appearance on the tax indictment, the government made a production of materials to the defendant on January 9, 2024, which included over 500,000 pages of documents and consisted of additional information related to the tax investigation.
January 11, 2023: Arraignment
Ew,
“Weiss doesn’t describe when in 2023 the FBI first decided to send the gun to a lab for testing, but he admits it wasn’t until 2023).” Weiss’s warrantless technique, as your quote above captures, proves he was over his skis fascinated by snow. Lowell’s attention to details on the other hand will ensure the landing Weiss’s jump deserves.
Given the political flavor of this proceeding, a dismissal of Weiss’s cases against Hunter Biden on ‘legal technicalities’ will still result in unceasing howling from the RWNM that the Bidens are getting away with something. HB deserves a fair outcome to his cases, but he won’t ever receive ‘fair and balanced’ coverage from the RW press. Further, even if these cases are exposed in court as hopelessly compromised political hit jobs, the MSM will still cleave to its horse race coverage until November.
You’re absolutely right. But the legal problems with this case were why he wasn’t going to try them in the first place (and why both DC USAO and CACD told him it wouldn’t fly).
Liberals should avoid reflexively treating every failure by team Trump as something that doesn’t matter. “It never matters” is one of the central messages of team Trump, and it’s obviously false.
A running theme here is that people should not be data mules for Trump by repeating his rants unfiltered, and I think there’s a parallel point that needs to be raised over and over with being a messaging mule for Trump.
Having the Hunter Biden case bogged down in problems is a suboptimal result for Team Trump compared to having it sail forward unimpeded, in the same way that low gas prices or dropping crime rates are not helpful to Team Trump, even though he will continue to lie about the truth.
By “RWNM” do you mean “Republicans With No Morals?”
RWNM = Right Wing Noise Machine.
The right wing industrial-scale political megaphone: Sinclair talk radio + Fox News + Alex Jones types etc.
But your take works, too.
Two possible date typos in paragraph 4: should the year be 2018 in both “…when he purchased a gun on October 12, 2019” and “….Hunter Biden admitted he was in treatment for addiction in Fall 2023…”?
“It’s true that on July 26, 2023, Hunter Biden admitted he was in treatment for addiction in Fall 2023 — ”
The dates seem out of whack.
Great article and Weiss appears to be determined to walk into a buzz saw with no one to stop him.
Thank you for shining a light into the murky details of Weiss’s attempts to smear Hunter Biden into an indictment. Possible typo in the first sentence of the fifth paragraph, Hunter appears to predict in July 2023 that he’s addicted in the fall of 2023.
Apologies…your comment was not visible to me when I commented below. :-(
Thanks to all for helping me to fix my dates. It’s like all the comments backstage were, “Wheeler, fix your dates!!!”
Being a dyslexic cartoonist I’ve learned to appreciate gentle correction to my atrocious spelling ;-)
Have you heard the one about the dyslexic, agnostic, insomniac? He’d lie awake at night wondering if there really is a dog.
Sorry, sometimes I just can’t help myself.
In such a high profile case, selective and vindictive prosecution – if once established after the dust settles suggests Weiss could face a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing.
A hearing with the theme that if a Special Counsel in high profile litigation shows a lack of respect for proper due process procedure, such conduct, if not called into question, can lead to disrespect among the people for the law and for how it is prosecuted.
So far the Senate has been silent. If the House ever issues a Joe Biden impeachment charge to the Senate before the election, the Democrats have the votes to defeat it by an outright majority. After the election which party controls either House will be shown, going forward, but the Republicans likely will never get the super majority needed to convict President Biden in the Senate. (As was the case where it was known all along during the two Trump impeachments that the Senate would not convict.) Political theater can backfire, and Democrat Senators might simply not want to string things out further than the House does. Treating the whole thing as beneath Senate involvement, pure politics only, might be a very sound Senate approach, as in move along to real business without getting sidetracked.
And if the Republicans do not impeach before the election they may lose the House majority which they’d need to impeach later.
Whether those currently the majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee are waiting, or disinclined to carry on further, Weiss, nonetheless is under Senate member scrutiny.
https://www.judiciary.senate.gov/about/members
As a blind guess, Blumenthal and Klobuchar would not want to mess in the mud, and Coons representing Delaware would shy away from the Biden Delaware history, so that the Senate will leave things alone, absent an impeachment.
Marcy has clearly laid out the case that Lowell has a good chance of winning his motions. Marcy is probably best placed among us to judge the judge in guessing an outcome on the motions and has judiciously declined to publish a guess. A wise step.
Last, some news: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/federal-prosecutors-oppose-hunter-bidens-request-toss-gun-charges-rcna134211 — published days ago includes: “Biden was also indicted in California last month on nine tax-related charges, including three felony counts. He pleaded not guilty last week.” Linking – https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/hunter-biden-charged-rcna128658
It seems worth mentioning.
[Moderator’s note: 379 words — work on your concision. Optimum comment length is closer to 100 words. /~Rayne]
Thanks, EP. I’m not sure (even after reading your comment twice) exactly what you’re saying about SJC. That they will dispense with an impeachment inquiry or pass it on? Your comment about Chris Coons suggests that he’s somehow implicated in nefarious dealings in Delaware; I’m unaware of any, and would have thought he’d be inclined to defend Joe Biden from these trumped up charges should they get that far.
Weiss seems to be playing hide the ball with the gun charges. Throwing the “powdery substance” into the mix *now* without giving a date for that warrant seems like the kind of PR move that might backfire legally. In fact, all of this seems like a PR move at this point, geared for the Fox audience and not for any courtroom.
Sorry for confusion. The intent – the Senate could act, or pass.
Coons would be open to claims of “Biden’s Dem agent” from Delaware and might not need that headache. If impeachment happens the Senate must act. If not they could act. Or leave sleeping dogs lie. That was what I meant to say.
They could investigate how Weiss handled the case. The power is there. The discretion is there. That was what i meant. That there was a possibility. Not whether they should investigate.
And the observation that crack and powder are quite distinct is an excellent point. The chemistry is such that crack gets cooked from the powder and is smoked as granules. It seems unlikely Hunter was cooking crack on his own, rather buying it as crack after someone else cooked it. He might have been using both.
Beautiful Things:
Thanks, EP, for explaining. I hope you’re wrong about Coons, but what you say makes sense, and not just about him.
I just started reading, but TYPO:
“Biden admitted he was in treatment for addiction in Fall
2023[sb? >] 2018″Weiss and his gang are making much of Hunter’s addiction to *crack* cocaine–best known for its association with Black culture a generation ago, which I’m sure adds to its appeal for Wise and Weiss as a talking point re: Hunter.
The FBI, however, found *powder* cocaine on the gun holder (now, by a sort of prosecutorial synechdoche, conflated with the gun itself). Does that difference mean anything legally? Or can you accuse someone of being addicted to one thing, find another thing on his “gun,” and still prosecute him for owning the gun while addicted?
Penalties for using usually cheaper crack used to be higher than those for powdered cocaine, an intentionally racist difference.
Alleging that a target has abused or dealt drugs is a well-known page in the intelligence services’ bible on character assassination, as are sex crimes. The tool would be available to an errant prosecutor, who might independently use it to reduce sympathy for a defendant at trial. Or, in this case, to taint his politician father.
earl, I’m assuming (more from what you didn’t say than what you did) that this whole “FBI found Cocaine on Hunter’s Gun [sic]” thing is a whole lot more about PR than it is about legal strategy.
Would you expect it to come up either in evidence or a courtroom?
This looks like a shiny object to distract the judge from tossing the case because of improper political influence. Sort of like saying, they had every intention of bringing charges from the beginning, and the case was so strong they found even more evidence without even looking. I’m not even sure this would go before a jury if it went to trial, namely because they have no firm connection tying the residue to Hunter nor his residence.
Thinking of this after the earlier post about white powder on the gun holster –
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/25/sources-secret-service-inserted-itself-into-case-of-hunter-bidens-gun-477879
That is a reminder of the gun chain of custody, as Marcy earlier reported. The daughter in law. The dumpster. From there into state custody, into a baggie. No prior notice of white powder. Then, a surprise – it was cocaine.
Were any other dumpster contents tested for cocaine, where somebody else’s empty baggie might have incidentally contacted the holstered weapon?
That no previous police notice of white powder is of record suggests it was so miniscule an amount to not be too notorious. As possibly incidental contamination from intervening non-police circumstances apart from Hunter.
And Marcy noted it was reaccessed “to photograph” so if those photographs show lots of white powder glommed on, gee, why hadn’t the state police noticed, or the ATF people? Do you expect the FBI made their photos available to the media? If so, web searching could not find a photo of the holstered weapon, or the holster itself.
White powder residue, after time in a dumpster could have been powdered sugar, flour, from somebody’s baking waste. Especially if a restaurant’s dumpster? Chalkline residue in a hardware store’s dumpster or from a carpentry shop? Face powder?
Bottom line, there was intervening custody and circumstances.
I’d have posted it on the other thread if having thought of it then. But this tardy warrant, together with white powder showing up years later; circumstances keep piling up to where reasonable doubts might arise or be argued as to how cocaine got there.
Incidental dumpster contact could have been from a bar band’s trash in the same dumpster, police reusing a storage baggie, a property room technician handling the holstered weapon after filling another baggie from a cocaine bust without washing hands, anything. But the dumpster stands out.
[Moderator’s note: SECOND REQUEST: 305 words — work on your concision. Optimum comment length is closer to 100 words. You’ve now left two overlong comments in this thread. Shorten up or risk auto-moderation. /~Rayne]
I actually don’t doubt the cocaine is real.
The problem is what it says about the investigation, vis a vis this motion.
Lowell is saying, “for years you didn’t think this was worth charging.”
Weiss’ response: Sure we did. We told you that in March 2022 (after a leak to NYT).
Weiss: But oh by the way we had never looked at the gun before 2018, and never got a warrant for iCloud content before December 2023. And THAT warrant may be poison fruit of the laptop.
I thought I read someplace it returned a positive result for cocaine. “How conveeeenient!” Says the Church Lady…
Perp Old Ought*
Follow the Perp Old Ought,
Follow the Perp Old Ought,
Follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow the Perp Old Ought.
Follow the mudflow, ever upstream,
Follow the fallow to follow the scheme,
Follow, follow, follow, follow,
Follow the Perp Old Ought.
We’re off to see the lizard,
Barr bunker-full Lizard of Cause,
We hear his is a viz of a biz,
If ever a viz there was.
If ever, oh ever a viz there was,
The Lizard of Cause is one because:
because, because, because,
because, because…
Because of Barr bunker-full things abuzz!
We’re off to see the lizard,
Barr bunker-full Lizard of Cause.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cwCIkKFFR4
“Follow The Yellow Brick Road –
The Wizard Of Oz”
*Hint: What color is a belch?
Answer: Burple
All this ineptitude almost make me long for the good old days, when political enemies were gone after with overcharging, surveillance and massive redactions.
Almost.
Talking about weaponization of the DOJ. Republicans pushed him into this prosecution. Yes, Hunter did commit criminal offenses. What he was offered originally wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Republicans wanted to keep this alive for political purposes.
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In a lawyer’s office, both defense or prosecution, the words “Marcy Wheeler is on the phone for you” has to strike fear in the person receiving the call. Ditto for an email or text that comes in with “Marcy Wheeler” as the sender. A million questions have to run through the recipient’s head in a couple of seconds . . .
What does she know?
What does she what to know?
Why does she want to know it?
What did I miss?
What did I get wrong?
Who else has she spoken with?
When is she going to hit “publish”?
How much trouble am I about to be in when her post goes live?
Who is going to be pounding on me after they read it?
To be fair, I am sure that not every call Marcy makes is like this. Some might be encouraging or helpful. But the initial feeling for any lawyer/spox on the other end* has to be “Oh, shit . . .”
____________
*The exception has to be Randy Samborn, Patrick Fitzgerald’s spokesperson for the Plame affair. Given that his answer was always going to be “we have no statement to make” or “no comment”, and that *everyone* knew that this would be his reply to any and everything he was asked, any calls Marcy made to him back in the day had to be more amusing than confrontational.
Honestly, Abbe Lowell’s office has never returned my emails. Ditto the lawyers for the Durham defendants.
I call Weiss’ spox more just bc this is the stuff that, if they can really correct it, they should.
Just as honestly, I still suspect that the reaction to receiving the call/email is still “Oh, shit” even if they don’t return your emails/calls.
And yes, they should correct their mistakes, and as things mount up, they should look at seeing if they could go resurrect the plea deal they had agreed to. But they won’t, because the same folks who pressured them into reneging on the plea agreement would scream bloody murder if they went back to that deal.
Rock, meet hard place.
Your emails calling attention to that untenable location only make their position worse. That’s not your fault, mind you. You’re just reminding them that this is where they have placed themselves.
I’d think that Lowell’s office would be happy to get emails from her. Maybe I’m wrong, and she only contacts them about errors/ambiguities, but they should certainly be happy about her columns.
If lawyers find my work valuable they know where to find it.
During Durham people repeatedly suggested I was not just in contact, but being paid by the defense. It was a bit nutty.
In something like 2017, btw, I met one of Scooter Libby’s lawyers. He told me they followed me assiduously too. It’s not like I was all that friendly to him.
“It’s not like I was all that friendly to him.”
That’s a serious understatement.
If you don’t poke holes in your own arguments, you won’t find them before the opposition does.
For Lowell’s team it may make more sense *not* to be seen as collaborating with EW. After all, as she says of her work, “they know where to find it.”
Hunter’s girlfriend in October 2018 messaged him ” You have lost your mind hunter. I’m sorry I handled it poorly today but you are in huge denial about yourself . . .”
What is the legal standard for a purchase of a firearm by an addict who has not admitted to themselves that they are an addict? Doesn’t there need to be a prior diagnosis within a time-frame, some kind of fact set? Plenty of people are drug users who do not believe they are drug addicts. If Hunter was in “huge denial” about himself at the time, as this would certainly seem to support, his attestations may not have been knowingly false.
That’s why they included the “white-powder-which-turned-out-to-be-cocaine” stuff in their response. According to the Politico story linked up-thread (by EP, 10:35), the holster was turned over, by Hallie, separately from the recovery of the pistol. So the cocaine, supposedly, didn’t come from the trash-can but must have been – again, supposedly – in Hunter’s house in order to get onto/into the holster. The association with the holster makes it easier to believe that he was an addict when he purchased the weapon, thus, guilty as charged, i.e., lying on the paperwork.
But this doesn’t take away any of the other problems with the evidence, e.g., only collected literally years after the events. Plus, Hunter has already conceded that he was an addict at the time so it’s not like this really adds anything or was remotely surprising. Remains to be seen, as others have pointed out, what the actual quantity of “white powder” was, whether measured in micrograms or nanograms.
IANAL, but it seems to me if a person were in court-ordered treatment, for example, attesting to not being a drug addict would be knowingly false.
Doesn’t a crime happen with the attestation? What if at the time of the purchase Hunter was in denial about being a drug addict? His girlfriend’s message seems like good evidence this might have been the case.
If someone admits to themselves they are addicted, entering a twelve step program in March, are they suddenly exposed to federal charges for a gun purchase they made in January? Didn’t this all happen before Hunter entered treatment Fall 2018? Fall goes all the way to December.
Weiss’s filing distinguishes between the “brown leather pouch” (which was discarded in the trash and found by an elderly man) and “the gun case” (which was obtained from HB). The cocaine residue was found on the pouch.
I’m sure if we did a random sampling of trash bins in that neighborhood, we’d find zero cocaine in those environs, right?
Weiss is a dog catching his own tail, like an ouroboros, say, but slightly more kinetic.
Lowell has to want this mess to be sorted asap and with extreme prejudice (which doesn’t seem to me to be an outlier among possible outcomes), which if it goes their way, could make hash of the CA charges filed last month. It would call into fatal question the underlying motives of that whole SP unit, and would petrify any FARA gameplan either in the OSP pipeline, or in Trump’s wet dreams.
The main problem is the same for the “laptop”. The police did not find the gun, holder, autoloader, ammunition and the leather pouch, they were instead turned in by the elderly gentleman to the police. As far as I can tell, those items were not returned to Hunter, and remained in the evidence locker till the FBI took pictures of the firearm.
I seem to recall a trial in which traces of cocaine were found on the defendant’s currency. On cross-examination, the prosecution’s expert witness admitted that almost all currency in circulations has tiny traces of cocaine. I’m guessing the Hunter Biden cocaine is measured in nanograms.
Always believe what ex-spouses and lovers say about you, yup. always. Credible as hell, no problem on cross. Good deal.
I’m still thinking about that Federalist lawyer, Will Levi, Barr’s Mini Barr, exposed for tracking down the laptop, and Barr response, Super! Our taxpayer dollars paying for these smears. What to make of Cippiloni and Philbin joining Barr’s law firm?
When the goal of the prosecution is to create impressions of wrongdoing rather than convictions for wrongdoing it matters not the timelines between indictment and warrants. The words themselves are weapons of impression.
Can Garland have a chat with Weiss on this mess?
NEWS — https://oversight.house.gov/release/comer-statement-on-transcribed-interview-with-kevin-morris%ef%bf%bc/
At a guess, Lowell’s people might do a work product review of the transcript if Morris provides a copy. Not discussing it with the client until after the Feb. 28 deposition, if ever.
No copy of a new subpoena issued Hunter was found searching the web. — Sub. d.t,, or simply to testify?
NEWS –https://duckduckgo.com/?q=house+press+release+hunter+biden+agrees+feb.+28+deposition&ia=web
Checking a few search returns, no press release detail/copy was found. Guessing, Hunter reviews no documents to refresh his memory before testifying, and Lowell will interject often on defining a time frame about dep. questions to Hunter. If it gets to documents not handed Hunter to review before responding, Lowell can note hundreds of thousands of pages from Weiss, and still working through them as a work product review.
If Morris got a transcribed appearance, Hunter should be due a full transcription too. A transcript might reveal if Hunter misunderstood any question.
Again guessing, Hunter will not review any documents to refresh his memory before testifying. He can always review items later.
House GOP seems at cross purposes – wanting Weiss to have a free hand to prove Hunter a drug addled criminal; also wanting to show Hunter was carefully part of a planned indirect complex bribe scheme reaching Joe.
Last guess is if they’ve got nothing so far against Joe, they will not get it from Hunter’s best recollection.
(OT, now with more 14th craptacular from Maine…)
Maine secretary of state appeals ruling deferring Trump ballot decision
(…)
On Wednesday, the judge declined to weigh in on the merits, instead saying that Trump can remain on the ballot until the U.S. Supreme Court resolves a similar case from Colorado. Bellows must afterward reassess her decision, the judge ruled.
Bellows had warned that punting the decision on Trump’s eligibility would put Maine in a “precarious position,” saying voters may end up casting their votes with Trump’s qualification in doubt. The state’s Super Tuesday, March 5 primary is fast approaching, and the Supreme Court won’t hear oral arguments until next month, Bellows noted.
“A stay of this proceeding, followed by a February decision from the U.S. Supreme Court, may ultimately force the Secretary and her staff to scramble to minimize damage to the integrity of the March 5, 2024 election,” the Maine attorney general’s office, representing Bellows, had written in court filings.
Bellows filed a notice of appeal Friday, bringing the dispute to the state’s top court, known as the Law Court in this context.
Maine state law prescribes a speedy timeline for the court to act. The parties will now have four days to file their written briefs, and the court is obligated to issue its decision within 14 days of the judge’s ruling from Wednesday.
(more)
https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/4417733-maine-secretary-state-appeals-trump-ballot-ruling/
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24367744-bellows-appeals-maine-superior-court-trump-14a-ruling
Wow. You’re down to ~200 words. And yet you could have stopped at the first graf and shared the links. This news isn’t relevant to the post, either.
Thank you, not only for the backstabbing, but also as to your expansive knowledge of trial and appellate law. A total gem.
I was right about Willis, and I will be right about the idiotic Colorado case. But, hey, you geniuses should flog the contrary to it. Flog along.
Is there a point to this OT comment? Other than the usual bashing of someone who isn’t a white guy?
Yes, the point is…I was right. And got killed for it.
The subpoena fight does seem to show that Willis over played her hand in filing to quash. J Wade appears to have established in her response that Willis can provide relevant and material evidence to live issues in the divorce proceedings.
Consequently, the threats against J Wade of conspiracy to obstruct justice, take on a different hue
It appears the rumors of your death have been greatly exaggerated.
Yes, you were right, so please take a victory lap and write a post about it.
That’s all I’ve got.
i d be very interested to read what bmaz has to say about the Hunter Biden case and the prospects for Lowell’s handling of it so far.
Considering the source of the accusations against Willis, I’d strongly suggest waiting for this to play out before you take your victory lap. Not saying you’re wrong, but the ex-wife of one of the prosecutors has teamed up with one of the accused. Nothing suspicious there at all… we’ll know more in 2-4 weeks.
it’s a plug for the Nazitown special on PBS, and a crunk on folks fancy for fascists.
Try posting this sort of thing on, say, a Mastodon instance, instead.
There are lawyers and legal-work commenters there, too.
There’s no on or off topic on that site. The character limits are also more severe.
Some of their hosts have 500-letter limits. About 100 words…
Really frustrating today that we’ve had a small number of commenters publishing excessively long comments, some off topic. It begins to look like DDoS to keep readers on mobile devices from maintaining interest in comments.
I don’t know what you’ve heard from other people, but I’m fine with long posts on my phone.
You are but not everybody is — and long posts when the comments ziggurat out to the 3rd or 4th reply may mean for folks who have vision problems and have adjusted their devices to use a larger font may be scrolling one or two words at a time.
Because of the site’s clear disavowal of bmaz, I would continue to expect this, not only the drop in comments but the OT nature of them. I will continue to posit that most people actually liked the fact that bmaz was fearless in aggressively getting his opinions out there, regardless of how he did it. He was and will continue to be correct regarding Fani Willis and he’s going to be correct about the Colorado Trump decision. Will be interesting to see the site’s metrics for January 2024. I predict another monthly drop in unique visits.
We’re not here for volume of traffic and never have been, as you can see from the advertising and promotion plastered all over this site.
End-gaining behavior* at its finest.
“To get from A to B, you must first know that you are at A.” — Robert Fripp
*A brief on “end-gaining”
https:// sparkmotionbody. com/blog/end-gaining-what-it-is-why-you-should-be-aware-of-it/
I think it’s OT and an inappropriate use of this blog to promote your own YouTube channel.
Yes, it would be, especially without saying so up front.
Questions:
1) re: “..Shapley, investigators obtained 2017 texts with that 2020 warrant- which again may suggest that Weiss didn’t obtain later content until obtaining it first on the laptop.”
Are you saying that the 2017 texts were on the Mac Isaac laptop? To my knowledge, based on the Marco Polo set, the earliest texts in the Mac Isaac laptop are Spring 2018. Unless they for some reason decided not to publish stuff in their possession, or I missed something.
2. Why will the rehab payments in Fall 2018 include Ablow? Was there something on a receipt or payment plan to Ablow that suggests rehab at that time?
It is my understanding that the treatment with Ablow in Fall 2018 is more traditional psychiatric & ketamine treatment. Then Hunter leaves Ablow late December and family stages an intervention. Hunter returns to Ablow in Jan 2019 for 30 day rehab treatment (including sobriety partners and rigorous drug testing).
To this point, the linked transcript to the July hearing, Hunter says his last stint in rehab was Fall of 2018. The Adam Entous article about the ski accident says Hunter was with Ablow “receiving ketamine infusion therapy, in hope of easing his addictions to crack and alcohol.” So I don’t know if Hunter even considers Ablow rehab, there’s some vagueness in how events are worded. The Entous article also claimed Hunter was with Ablow continuously, so maybe Hunter views that as one continuous stint, which began in the Fall, November.
Ehh, maybe I’m nitpicking.
Nitpicking is the legal system’s core competency. Didn’t Ablow consider Ablow to be rehab of a sort? Or do we not know that officially?
Ketamine is usually used to treat major depression, which often underlies addiction; I’ve long wondered why Hunter/his lawyers haven’t raised this component of his mental status, especially as compounded in Hunter’s case by grief over his brother’s death and the incipient stress of his dad’s campaign.
Here’s excerpts from Beautiful Things
Here Hunter says winter, not Fall. He also gets details wrong such as his second stint with Ablow was 4 weeks not 6, and began in January not February.
So, I’m not really certain if Hunter considers Ablow “rehab” or if he considers the treatment in Fall or Winter.
But there’s some murkiness about these details, and that seems intentional.
RE: 2017: Shapley said that they got the 2017 WhatsApp texts via that iCloud warrant (he says August but it now appears the warrant was served in July). But at least some of that content was available via the encrypted iPhone backup.
Re: Ablow. I am looking for it but there was a ref in the Response that suggests Weiss is treating the Ablow treatment as rehab.
I noted what you did–that Hunter said Fall 2018 was the last prior attempt. Either of your explanations works for me.