Reading, Rather than Bringing, Receipts Demons: The Greek Tragedy of America’s Hunter Biden Addiction 
Reading, Rather than Bringing, Receipts Demons: The Greek Tragedy of America’s Hunter Biden Addiction
Thanks to my semi comatose condition today, I forgot to reduce the size of the video so had problems with the playback. So I uploaded a clean version of the show to YouTube. The one embedded above probably won’t work. Here’s the good link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HlGFvg0hygE
The clean audio will be posted at nicolesandler.com/6-7-24 shortly.
Thanks… Again I apologize for my druggyness today
Feel better soon, Nicole! :-)
Thanks Nicole. This video link works for me, and sounds good etc.
Marcy’s mic was a little low, though.
Thanks so much, Nicole.
I’m sincerely hoping that your legs got rest!
Healing vibes your way Nicole! Much gratitude for you plowing through your illness to get Friday’s show up for Dr. Wheeler to discuss HB’s trial. Joined you on Patreon, so glad I can support your work too.
Marcy, you and Nicole are probably aware of this…but just in case…
as far as I can tell, the video is not available here or at Nicole’s place, which you linked to at Bluesky.
I replaced the YouTube video. Deleted the first one. The one that’s posted now works
Yes, your YouTube connection ist Kaput!
Marcy talks about the news media’s shitty biased coverage, with key observations at 53:46 about the difference between Trump’s hush money fraud trial and Hunter Biden’s firearms trial not covered this week by most outlets — how Hunter’s family is represented in spite of the fact Trump’s wife never showed up and his son had to be shamed by media into making an appearance.
NYT lumps all the women related to or in Hunter Biden’s orbit in to “spectacle”:
That’s it, the only observation about a dedicated stepmother providing emotional support to her stepson she helped raise. She gets the photo used in social media post promoting this crappy reporting:
CNN does a better job by focusing solely on Dr. Biden and expanding on what her presence in the courtroom means:
source: https://www.cnn.com/2024/06/07/politics/jill-biden-hunter-trial-first-lady-duties/index.html
There’s a piece focusing on Hallie Biden in UK’s The Times by Hugh Tomlinson — I’m not even going to link to it because Tomlinson is a known PITA. No idea why The Times felt the Hunter Biden story was of such intense interest to readers in the UK that they assigned him the beat in Delaware and DC for the last three years.
The head on his latest:
Of course the head reads as if Tomlinson got a quote from Hallie — that’s the kind of bullshit which comes with his kind of reporting for The Times though he had no contact with Hallie at all for this story.
Dr. Biden is there to support her own relationship with her stepson, and to stand in for his father and her husband, who can’t be there. She’s also there for Joe. She knows the anguish of a loving dad, who, because he’s an honorable man as well as president, can’t do a thing to help his son.
Ironically, that represents two of many things Donny Trump knows nothing about: the restrained or non-use of power; and a close-knit, mutually supportive family.
It sounds like today’s transcripts might be interesting.. I can’t wait to hear Dr. Wheeler’s take after she gets them and has a chance to read through and think about it.
I came across some “live blog” style coverage of today from Associated Press, which mentioned a few recent things:
* Lowell is going to make an oral motion for acquittal.. he will lay out the grounds for the motion in a written submission to the court.
* Gun store employee Jason Turner, as the 1st defense witness, testified that the form was missing Hunter Biden’s signature. He also said he wrote Hunter Biden’s vehicle registration number in a box on the form. But on the form shown in court, that box is empty. “Where is it?” Lowell asked, prompting prosecutors to ask for a sidebar.
* Gun store owner Ronald Palimere was also called by the defense, as was Hunter’s daughter Naomi.
Will write up later in the day.
Tl;dr, Naomi’s testimony backfired catastrophically. She provided the prosecution with the best circumstantial evidence that Hunter did drugs the night before Hallie threw the gun away.
But the gun shop boys may have destroyed any chance Weiss has of guilty verdicts on the two form-related charges. Every one of the guns shop witnesses’ testimony conflicts.
Seems to be the case based on media reports. But did the jury see the same thing? How can we know?
Seemed bad though!
Could still be pulled together in closing. Getting to the nuts and bolts, they’re supposed to convict purely on the basis that a crime was committed because another uncharged crime was committed. They have all this overwhelming evidence of him using yet aren’t charging him with that crime. BTW, both alcohol and tobacco are explicitly excluded in the definitions for controlled substances.
Replying to Rayne June 7, 2025 at 8:27 pm
Thanks for the salient recap, Rayne.
Fridays w/ hour goes by so quickly and there’s so much to cover that I’ve taken to listening with a legal pad handy. It’s no longer a ‘listen while driving’ thang.
While I’ve admittedly begun limiting my “news” consumption re this trial, Marcy briefly mentioned nullification, according to my notes. I’ve only seen this mentioned in one other place:
“The government’s assertion that Hunter Biden “would not be here today if he was just a drug addict” shouts the quiet part out loud—as Hunter Biden is clearly not “just a drug addict.” He is the son of a sitting president and, by this statement, the prosecution all but invites the jury to wonder if any other drug addict would have been charged in these circumstances. That’s how you nullify juries.”
Shan Wu
Daily Beast
“ Hunter Biden Prosecutors Might’ve Already Lost the Jury”
June 5, 2024
I’ve not linked to the piece for a couple of reasons.
Oh, I only commented about Marcy’s remarks from 53:46 on regarding media coverage of the family in attendance.
The previous 53:46 are worth your time — I slapped on my Bluetooth headphones and listened while I worked in the vegetable garden.
Marcy needs more sleep, though, I could hear it. Hope she got some after rugby!
It mos def was worth my time.
I’ve set aside some time to research a few items she mentioned which I missed this week, possibly making my garden whisper “Really? That’s your choice?”
I hope they both get some well deserved rest.
Thanks again.
Replying to Rayne’s thread also:
I’ve had a super busy week and not cruised the Intarwebs like I normally do, but responding to Dr. Wheeler’s deserved take down of the media coverage this week, there’s an article in Politico that critiques HB’s trial better than most I’ve read-
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/06/07/hunter-biden-trial-truths-column-00162083 (I’m assuming this is a safe link)
Ankush Khardori starts out the gate calling the trial for what it, a “public flogging”. They believe a conviction is likely but go on to point out it’s dubiousness, the effect of Noreika’s rulings on Lowell’s ability to defend Hunter, the scuttled plea deal and Republican pressure and politics, pointing out the MAGat hypocrisy over their weaponization of government bally-hooing.
These are all things that readers here are well aware of and even though Khardori doesn’t really unpack any of these issues, at least they are getting written about.
I agree that this is a good piece and that “even though Khardori doesn’t really unpack any of these issues, at least they are getting written about.”
Correction:
* Hunter said a Russian drug stole his “computer”, he didn’t use the word “laptop”
* And that conversation was 1/6/19, not December
This may come across as just semantics, but this is the point I’m making about it being an iPad and not a laptop. Daily Mail translated Hunter’s term “computer” into “laptop”. And everyone else, including myself, repeated their claim.
Even the contemporaneous August 2018 text message that Marco Polo claims corroborates uses the word “it”.
Thanks! I do appreciate your corrections.
Thank you for going into the details on this on all other topics you do.
Ironically, my first comment on this site about a year ago was about the “3rd laptop” & the Russian drug dealer, suggesting the forensic timeline to look back at least to August 1 to capture the theft.
At the time I just regurgitated the narrative that it was a laptop. I wish I had analyzed that detail more critically sooner. To see if they are even representing correctly basic facts about the Hunter Biden laptop narrative.
The Daily Mail putting out the narrative that it was definitely a laptop, and a couple other most likely false narratives, and no journalists fact check it reminds me of that scene in A Last Action Hero where the bad guy leaves the film world, and enters real NYC, and realizes he can just shoot someone and nobody cares.
https://youtu.be/e3g8GHkxppI
It should become practice on the left to caveat any controversy surrounding a well-known individual in which technology is central until more details about the technology have been nailed down.
In hindsight we probably could have predicted the use of a monolithic “the laptop” mythos developed and used in an influence operation the way the monolithic “the server” was used during 2016 after Russia hacked the DNC. These mythic devices are MacGuffins utilized to drive narrative; the plot device must still be picked apart but recognizing it for what it is much earlier can slow or defeat the destructive narrative in progress.
So long as the average American remains technologically illiterate when it comes to electronics, we can expect another such construct targeting another threat to the far right’s standard bearer, whoever that may be in the future.
Axios published about Hunter’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle today.
The affair with Hallie started sooner than she knew. She was remarried last weekend and her husband was there at the trial with her.
Jill Biden was not there for Kathleen’s testimony.
[Welcome back to emptywheel. Please use the SAME USERNAME and email address each time you comment so that community members get to know you. You previously published a comment here as “AttyJulieCA” — I have edited this comment to match it as I don’t think you want your RL name published. Please advise by reply if you wish to change that. Otherwise please make a note of your established username, check your browser’s cache and autofill. Thanks. /~Rayne]
It’s the norm at this site to provide a link when discussing a particular article at another site, unless reasons for not providing the link are noted in the comment.
Probably referring to this article:
The exiled Biden: Trial reveals anguish of Hunter’s ex-wife
I know you’re trying to be helpful, but it’s on the commenter to do the work.
The Axios piece dated 6/7/24 by Alex Thompson, entitled
“The exiled Biden: Trial reveals anguish of Hunter’s ex-wife”,
seems like a rehash of the NYPost campaign to me.
I summed it up using Thompson’s own line, albeit his was directed at Hunter and his parents:
“ Buhle’s testimony this week also recounted petty slights: ”