The AT&T Associations Underlying the Shoddy Laptop Validation

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Hunter Biden’s prosecutors may have knowledge of more problems with the laptop attributed to him than they’ve let on.

As I’ve described and quoted here, all the validation they’ve provided for the laptop is that the serial number for the device matches one of the seven or eight laptops he was using in the year leading up to John Paul Mac Isaac receiving it and the invoice from John Paul Mac Isaac’s shop was sent to Hunter’s publicly available email address; the invoice submitted at trial doesn’t even show the metadata.

As I noted, when Derek Hines asked summary witness Erika Jensen (who is not a cybersecurity expert) to describe the genesis of the digital evidence, he only asked her to show the subscriber records.

When Derek Hines had Erika Jensen present the cherry pick of evidence they’re using in this case, he relied on Subscriber records (one, two, three) and Jensen’s testimony to tie the comms depicted in the summary chart to Hunter. She didn’t show Apple’s records of which devices were associated with his account at any given time, which would give jurors a sense of — for example — the precise turmoil in his devices in this period (but would also give some idea of real anomalies that should have led to the exclusion of the laptop). Prosecutors could have shown that Hunter went through a lot of devices by showing that list from Apple. Instead, they’re going to rely on Kestan’s testimony.

He did not ask her to show the list of devices, obtained from Apple, that had been associated with Hunter’s account. We’re just taking Agent Jensen’s word that the laptop is associated with the computer (it is, but I find it notable that prosecutors didn’t submit the list into evidence).

Q. How?

A. Among other things, there was a serial number that’s on the back of this laptop that matches the Apple subpoena records that they obtained in 2019, so it matches the registration of this particular device to the iCloud account at a particular date.

Q. And is that serial number FVFXC2MMHB29?

A. Yes.

Q. And that’s also in the Apple records, you said?

Note: even though elsewhere she describes that the Apple information obtained “purchase history by device,” Jensen doesn’t claim that there’s a receipt showing Hunter buying it from Apple. We know there are receipts for the laptop Hunter bought on September 1 (the one that ended up with Keith Ablow), and the two phones replaced the same day he bought a gun. As far as I know, no one has ever seen a receipt for the laptop that ended up in FBI custody.

For each of the two device iCloud backups used at trial, Jensen made sure that the devices were associated with one of three phone numbers shown on the subscriber subpoenas to AT&T.

Q. What did that response show?

A. It showed — it would be considered supplier records, so it showed purchase history by device associated with Apple ID’s, which are associated with a person, and registration information for devices, and other subscriber information for devices associated with Robert H. Biden or Hunter Biden.

Q. Did those records correlate in some respects to the phone records you received from AT&T?

A. Yes. You could see in the records that the phone numbers that came back from AT&T were associated with various devices every time.

[snip]

Q. Are there two back up files that investigators utilized for evidence in this case?

A. Yes.

Q. What back up files were those?

A. So we named them Apple back up one, two, three and four. Three is a back up of an iPad pro. So that one was one that we used. The second one we used was Apple back up four, which was an iPhone SR.

Q. Were both of these devices registered to the defendant based on the Apple records?

A. Yes, so the extraction report that comes from these back ups show that there were information, including things like the phone number and MIMEI that associated these devices to Mr. Biden.

Q. Did you independently verify the Apple records to make sure they correlated with the AT&T phone records that we saw produced by AT&T?

A. Yes.

While Jensen described that devices could be backed up either via iCloud (to the cloud) or via iTunes (to a device), she didn’t describe that the most important texts in the case were backed up to iTunes on the laptop, and that that device was also using a number in Hunter’s name at the time (actually, he reactivated it the same day he bought the gun).

More notably, she didn’t do the same for a range of other communications obtained from the laptop:

That is, she was not asked to apply her secondary method of validation for a good number of the comms submitted.

Transcript

Q. What phone records did law enforce initially obtain?

A. We had phone records, subscriber and call records, which show the back and forth between numbers for three phone numbers that were used by Mr. Biden.

Q. And I’m showing you Exhibit 22(a), 23(a), and 24(a). Take a moment to look at those. What are those three exhibits, Agent Jensen?

A. So this is wireless subscriber information from AT&T for three telephone numbers, subscribed to Robert Biden.

MR. HINES: Move for the admission of 22(a), 23(a) and 24(a).

MR. LOWELL: No objection.

THE COURT: All right. Thank you, they’re admitted. ( Exhibit Nos. 22(a), 23(a) and 24(a) were admitted into evidence.)

MR. HINES: Ms. Vo, if you could display 22(a).

BY MR. HINES: Q. Agent Jensen, can you describe what this record shows?

A. So this record, which does have some redaction boxes for personal information shows on the top, you can see, financial liable party, billing party, this is information for a telephone number, 202-552-9396.

Q. And Ms. Vo, if we zoom in on the middle of that page where it says user information. Is that the phone number you read right there under MSISBN?

A. Yes.

Q. Is this a record you received in response to a subpoena your investigators received? A. Yes, this is a record we received approximately April 5th of 2019.

Q. It identifies the defendant’s name, as well associated with that number?

A. Yes.

Q. Turning to the next record, 23(a), is this another response to a subpoena from AT&T?

A. Yes, so this came back as part of the same subpoena return, so as part of the same subscriber record. This phone number is 302-377-3313. Also user name Robert H. Biden.

Q. That’s a second phone number that you learned was affiliated with Mr. Biden?

A. Yes.

Q. Turning to Exhibit 24(a), what is the phone number listed here?

A. This is a telephone number 202-285-2473.

Q. Who is it listed under?

A. Robert Biden.

Q. And is this the party that’s the listed financial liable party?

A. It’s both, so at the top it shows Robert Biden as well, and then the user information will typically be the person the phone number is associated with, at least per the AT&T record.

Q. If we zoom out a second Ms. Vo, and look at the date on the top left-hand corner of this document. When were these records provided to law enforcement?

A. On or about, they were generated on 4/5 of 2019, so we would have received them on or just after that date.

Q. After receiving this information from AT&T about the defendant’s phone numbers, did investigators issue other subpoenas?

A. Yes.

Q. What is an example of an entity that the investigator issued a subpoena to?

A. After that April 16th of 2019 there was a subpoena issued to Apple Incorporated.

Q. What is Apple Incorporated?

A. Apple as in Apple iPhones, iPads, MAC computers.

Q. Did Apple provide a response?

A. Yes.

Q. What did that response show?

A. It showed — it would be considered supplier records, so it showed purchase history by device associated with Apple ID’s, which are associated with a person, and registration information for devices, and other subscriber information for devices associated with Robert H. Biden or Hunter Biden.

Q. Did those records correlate in some respects to the phone records you received from AT&T?

A. Yes. You could see in the records that the phone numbers that came back from AT&T were associated with various devices every time.

Q. Was there an iCloud account associated with the Apple records that Apple provided?

A. They didn’t provide at that time contents, so it was just subscriber records, but you can see in some of the records that there were iCloud like services, subscribed to.

Q. What is an iCloud service?

A. So iCloud is essentially a way to replicate your data across your devices, for those who have multiple devices, or as a way to back up your phone and get your — you can find your phone, you can get your information put back on your new phone, it’s essentially a remote server controlled by Apple where you can subscribe to and leave your data on a server.

Q. So as opposed to needing to physically plug it into something, there is a way to also upload it to the cloud?

A. Right. The service changed overtime, but essentially you can back up your devices to a cloud, and the other option is you can back up a device to a computer, any computer actually that uses iTunes in that case to back up a device on a mobile computer.

Q. So the subpoena did not provide content at that time, correct?

A. Correct.

Q. Did it provide an e-mail address or iCloud address for Mr. Biden?

A. Yes. So there were Apple ID’s, which are typically an e-mail address, sometimes it’s not an e-mail address, but you can use your e-mail address, your Apple ID, and there was some provided.

Q. What was one of those iCloud addresses?

A. [email protected].

Q. Did investigators ultimately obtain content from Mr. Biden’s iCloud account?

A. Yes.

Q. How did they do that?

A. They sought and obtained a search warrant from this court house actually for content for the iCloud account, [email protected].

Q. So a judge issued a search warrant for that information?

A. I believe that was August 29th of 2019 that warrant was issued.

Q. How did the investigators get the data?

A. Apple requested a hard drive for the data, so the investigators sent a clean or new hard drive to Apple, Apple provided the data, and sent it back to the investigators.

MR. HINES: Your Honor, may I approach the witness?

BY MR. HINES:

Q. Agent Jensen, I’m showing you what’s been marked as government’s Exhibit 15. Do you recognize that?

A. Yes.

Q. What is it?

A. This is the hard drive that was sent to Apple and then returned to the investigators with the search warrant returned.

MR. HINES: I move Exhibit 15 into evidence.

MR. LOWELL: No objection.

THE COURT: Thank you. It’s admitted. ( Exhibit No. 15 was admitted into evidence.)

BY MR. HINES: Q. Can you please hold that up, Agent Jensen, for a moment? Did investigators ultimately review data from government’s Exhibit 15, that hard drive from Apple?

A. Yes.

Q. What kind of data did investigators derive from that hard drive?

A. There were e-mails that were obtained from the iCloud returned for iCloud back ups, so basically a back up for four different devices was recovered or extracted from the data.

Q. Did these back ups, these extractions have evidence of the defendant’s addiction on them?

A. Yes.

Q. Did that include evidence of addiction in the year 2018?

A. Yes.

Q. Are there two back up files that investigators utilized for evidence in this case?

A. Yes.

Q. What back up files were those?

A. So we named them Apple back up one, two, three and four. Three is a back up of an iPad pro. So that one was one that we used. The second one we used was Apple back up four, which was an iPhone SR.

Q. Were both of these devices registered to the defendant based on the Apple records?

A. Yes, so the extraction report that comes from these back ups show that there were information, including things like the phone number and MIMEI that associated these devices to Mr. Biden.

Q. Did you independently verify the Apple records to make sure they correlated with the AT&T phone records that we saw produced by AT&T?

A. Yes.

Q. Separately, did law enforcement also later obtain the defendant’s laptop and an external hard drive?

A. Yes.

Q. How did they come to receive it?

A. So in late 2019, the FBI received a tip that there was a laptop at a computer repair shop called the MAC Store, here in Wilmington, Delaware, that had been abandoned by its owner, and they ultimately obtained a subpoena and recovered the equipment from the computer store.

MR. HINES: May I approach, Your Honor?

THE COURT: You may. You may freely approach.

MR. HINES: Thank you, I appreciate that.

BY MR. HINES: Q. I’m showing you what has been marked as government’s Exhibit 16. Can you look at government’s Exhibit 16? What is government’s Exhibit 16, Agent Jensen?

A. This is a laptop that was recovered from the computer store.

Q. Did investigators ultimately extract data from that laptop?

A. Yes.

Q. How?

A. So they used forensics, FBI and other federal officials used forensic tools. Actually I think it was just the FBI that used forensic tools to extract data from the laptop.

Q. And was the FBI or law enforcement authorized to look in that laptop?

A. Yeah, so after the — after this laptop was received, the search warrant was obtained for data on the laptop.

Q. Ultimately in examining that laptop, were investigators able to confirm that it was Hunter Biden’s laptop?

A. Yes.

Q. How?

A. Among other things, there was a serial number that’s on the back of this laptop that matches the Apple subpoena records that they obtained in 2019, so it matches the registration of this particular device to the iCloud account at a particular date.

Q. And is that serial number FVFXC2MMHB29?

A. Yes.

Q. And that’s also in the Apple records, you said?

A. Yes.

Q. So from the data from the laptop and the hard drive, did you — what did you do next, or what did the FBI do next when assessing the addiction evidence?

A. So from the data that was extracted from both the iCloud back ups and this — the laptop, investigators were able to go through largely WhatsApp messages, iMessages, and text messages, and found evidence of addiction within the messages.

MR. HINES: Move for the admission of Exhibit 16 and 15 if I did not already, Your Honor.

MR. LOWELL: As we discussed, yes, we understand what that is, so we have that preliminarily, I have no objection.

THE COURT: Okay. It’s admitted. ( Exhibit Nos. 15 and 16 were admitted into evidence.)

Definition of an Addict: Why Hunter’s Paraphernalia around Kids Matters

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As I keep reminding, Hunter Biden faces three charges.

Two pertain to the form he signed at the gun shop, which not only implicates the mutually inconsistent testimony from the three gun shop guys, but also requires an additional element of the offense (materiality for one, and retention for the other) that may be undermined by their shenanigans, to the very limited extent Judge Noreika allowed Hunter to present that.

The third charge, unlawful possession, will be easier for prosecutors to prove. To win a conviction, they have to convince all 12 jurors that at any point in the 11 days Hunter owned the gun, he either knowingly used a controlled substance or was was knowing addict (the knowing possession will be easy to prove, since as soon as he realized the gun was gone from the console of his truck, he asked Hallie about it). Prosecutors are asking for unanimity on at least one of those measures.

Count 3: Possession of a Firearm by a Drug User or Drug Addict 18 USC 922(g)(3)

  • Whether the defendant was either an unlawful user of a controlled substance or a drug addict
  • Whether the defendant knowingly possessed a firearm
  • Whether the defendant knew he was an unlawful user of a controlled substance or a drug addict at any point in time between October 12 and October 23, 2018

Here are the definitions the jury will use to decide if he qualifies.

The term “addict” means any individual who habitually uses any controlled substance so as to endanger the public morals, health, safety, or welfare, or who is so far addicted to the use of a controlled substance as to have lost the power of self-control with reference to his addiction.

The phrase “unlawful user of a controlled substance” means a person who uses a controlled substance in a manner other than as prescribed by a licensed physician. The defendant must have been actively engaged in use of a controlled substance or controlled substances during the time he possessed the firearm, but the law does not require that he used the controlled substance or controlled substances at the precise time he possessed the firearm. Such use is not limited to the use of drugs on a particular day, or within a matter of days or weeks before, but rather that the unlawful use has occurred recently enough to indicate that the individual is actively engaged in such conduct. An inference that a person was a user of a controlled substance may be drawn from evidence of a pattern of use or possession of a controlled substance that reasonably covers the time the firearm was possessed.

Prosecutors have circumstantial evidence that Hunter used controlled substances in that 11 day period. Naomi Biden says that when she gave her dad’s truck back to him, it was clean. Hallie Biden says that when she searched it days later, it had remnants of crack cocaine. Add that to the text where Hunter told Hallie he was with a crack dealer, and that may be enough to convict.

That’s all circumstantial, of course.

What’s not in dispute is that Hunter was an addict in that period, and regularly referred to himself as such. But that’s where the rest of the definition gets interesting.

Prosecutors have presented evidence — again, with Naomi Biden’s testimony, as well as Zoe Kestan’s — that Hunter was a high functioning addict. They’re not going to convince a jury he had lost the power of self control for the period in question.

Which means to prove he was an addict they’ll need to prove that his habitual use of crack cocaine endangered public safety, and that he recognized that during the 11 days in question.

This is the single area where anything in his memoir is useful at all. He told stories about how in 2016 he did really stupid stuff involving cars.

But that’s not the most likely way a jury will find that he endangered public safety. It will be from Kathleen Buhle and Hallie’s testimony that they routinely searched his car to ensure there was no drug paraphernalia around their kids. It will be in Hallie’s validation of a text — a text prosecutors had not shared with Hunter in advance — that days after she disposed of the gun, she found a leather pouch with a pipe right next to where Hunter’s nephew Hunter was playing.

It’s also the reason why, I suggested, the defense may have called Naomi to rebut Hallie’s testimony that the console of the truck was locked, that the gun was kept locked the entire time he owned it. If the console was unlocked, then it shows that his addiction led him to treat the gun unsafely. It’s also why Abbe Lowell tried to get Hallie to remember that she told cops that she searched the truck because she was looking for evidence that he was cheating on her, not because she believed he had been using.

We have no idea what jurors will decide in days ahead. What we do know is what definition they’ll use to decide whether he was an addict.

And one measure of that will be the extent that he exposed Joe Biden’s grandchildren to his drug habit.

Prosecutors Plan to Use Their Failure to Exploit the Ablow Laptop against Hunter Biden

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There are actually at least two laptops admitted into discovery in the Hunter Biden trial: First, the laptop obtained from John Paul Mac Isaac, from which prosecutors obtained about half of their digital evidence. It was introduced as a physical object. Sadly neither side has submitted a picture of it, so there’s no exhibit showing what the famous laptop actually looks like.

There’s also a laptop depicted in this picture Zoe Kestan took, which prosecutors appear to have obtained from a subpoena to her, which she got off her phone.

According to the draft jury instructions, one of the immunized female witnesses against Hunter, Hallie Biden or Kestan, had a non-prosecution agreement, as opposed to testimonial immunity.

You have heard evidence that [PARTIES TO FILL IN] have ______________] has received a promise from the government that she will not be prosecuted;

And you have heard evidence that [_______________] has received a promise from the government that her testimony will not be used against her in a criminal case; or [my emphasis]

Given Abbe Lowell’s elicitation of Kestan’s role in buying Hunter drugs, and Leo Wise’s question that elicited the age difference between Hunter and Kestan in response, it seems likely Kestan is the one from whom prosecutors obtained full cooperation by waving around the possibility of criminal charges.

But back to the second laptop. By date — September 10, 2018 — and appearance (to the extent we can see it), the laptop in the picture is likely to be the laptop that ended up in Keith Ablow’s cottage in February 2019. Hunter started using that laptop around September 1, 2018.

Prosecutors have already revealed that they plan to explain away the fact that they have none of the kind of evidence showing Hunter purchasing crack in the period in which he owned a gun as they do from May 2018 and December 2019 and February 2019 by pointing to testimony — they originally claimed it would come from Hallie — that Hunter frequently lost phones.

Witness 3 observed that the defendant frequently lost phones and changed phones, which explains gaps in time where there are no messages.

I guess they realized that the texts with Hallie in the 11 days in question discredit the claim that his texts weren’t being sent and saved, so instead Leo Wise had Kestan describe all the phones Hunter lost in this period.

Q. Did that happen on more than one occasion where he lost a phone or had to replace a phone?

A. Yes.

Q. Approximately how many times would you say that happened during the period you were with him?

A. Maybe 5 or 6.

Note: I think she would not have known that he lost that many phones in that period; though he did lose that many devices.

They will show, however, that in a screencap that is undated but which she may have described as coming, “a day or so before Thanksgiving [2018]” or may have included among texts she kept sending afterwards, in which she marks that Hunter had a new phone (or new phone number).

After Abbe Lowell points out that prosecutors wasted hours and hours of jurors’ time showing them communications from periods no time close to the events in question, whoever does the reply to Lowell’s closing argument will point to that Kestan testimony and explain that the reason there are no comms from that period in October must be that Hunter lost the phones on which he arranged drug deals.

They’re not wrong, in theory.

I mean, it’s a rich theory given that in August 2023, prosecutors said they wouldn’t rely on the laptop at all because it was all backed up to the iCloud, and Derek Hines was misleading Judge Noreika about how much really was backed up to the cloud as recently as May 22. But I’m used to this kind of stuff from these guys.

The problem with this argument, though — or it would have been a problem if Noreika had forced prosecutors to do what is normally required in criminal cases, the actual validation of the data — is that the laptop on which any communications Hunter sent to drug dealers between October 11 and October 23 probably passed through the custody of the DEA.

Hunter Biden initiated a bunch of new devices at the tail end of the period he owned a gun.

On October 21, 2018 the laptop used as evidence at trial was first logged into his iCloud.

On October 22, a new iPhone XS was first logged into his iCloud (functionally, I believe this replaced a phone Hunter lost on October 11 or earlier).

On October 23, a new iPhone8 was first logged into his iCloud (functionally, I believe this also replaced a phone Hunter lost on October 11).

The laptop presented at trial does have evidence from before it was first put in service (largely in the form of an iTunes backup saved to the device itself), but prosecutors will argue that it wouldn’t have everything.

When Derek Hines had Erika Jensen present the cherry pick of evidence they’re using in this case, he relied on Subscriber records (one, two, three) and Jensen’s testimony to tie the comms depicted in the summary chart to Hunter. She didn’t show Apple’s records of which devices were associated with his account at any given time, which would give jurors a sense of — for example — the precise turmoil in his devices in this period (but would also give some idea of real anomalies that should have led to the exclusion of the laptop). Prosecutors could have shown that Hunter went through a lot of devices by showing that list from Apple. Instead, they’re going to rely on Kestan’s testimony.

But no one has mentioned that one of the devices Hunter lost — the one that would most likely have collected the equivalent set of comms to those introduced at trial — was found, found by the DEA when they searched the office of Hunter’s shrink, Keith Ablow.

David Weiss’ prosecutors are going to argue that they have gaps in their evidence precisely where that evidence would otherwise show ongoing crack use. What they’re not going to admit is that over a year after the investigation of Hunter Biden started, over a year after Federal authorities learned about the gun, the Federal government was in possession of the laptop that, according to this theory, would have the smoking gun crack communications to prove their case.

Instead of searching it for the comms that David Weiss will claim would prove their case, they simply gave the laptop back to Hunter Biden.

Having not done anything with the laptop when they had it in 2020, prosecutors will use their failure to do anything with the laptop in 2020 as an excuse for evidence they don’t have.

Demons: The Greek Tragedy of America’s Hunter Biden Addiction

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While Hunter Biden’s team hasn’t officially decided whether he will take the stand, I’m confident we have seen the last witness testimony in the trial. Friday’s testimony might lead to a split verdict from the jury, with the easiest possession charge solidified, but more reason a jury might balk at the two documents charges.

But, after reading the transcript, I can’t help but view the last day as emblematic of the tragedy of the American addiction to prosecuting Hunter Biden.

Familial Tragedy

Start with Naomi Biden’s testimony.

As I’ve been saying from the start, Hallie Biden was the most important witness for prosecutors, not just because she’s the one who found and discarded of the gun at the center of the case, but because Hunter sent Hallie texts during the time he owned the gun discussing buying crack.

In addition, at trial, Hallie testified that she searched Hunter’s truck because he had come to her house overnight on October 22 and she thought he might have been using. She described finding “remnants” of crack cocaine which, given the fact that the pouch in which Hallie put the gun before disposing of it had trace remnants of cocaine, was particularly damning.

Q. When you searched his car, what did you find? Or when you cleaned out his car, to use your words, when you went through the car?

A. Aside from trash and clothes.

Q. Full of trash and clothes?

A. Yeah. I did find some remnants of crack cocaine and some paraphernalia.

Q. And just to be clear, this is the morning of the 23rd?

A. Yes. Oh, and the gun, obviously.

In real time, there was a discrepancy between Hallie’s explanation to Hunter of why she disposed of the gun — because it was not locked up — and Hunter’s — that it was locked and her disposal of it publicly made it more risky.

On the stand, Hallie described that the lock on the console “had been broken.”

Q. Where did you find the gun in the truck?

A. In the console, the arm console, it was like a box.

Q. Was the box part of the truck like in the —

A. Yes.

Q. Was that box locked?

A. It had a lock, but the lock had been broken. So it was like two inches ajar, you couldn’t like click it.

Hallie’s testimony on the stand — that she searched the truck because Hunter looked like he had been using — conflicted with the police report (which quoted her saying “I think he is screwing around on me”) and some of her contemporaneous texts (which Abbe Lowell struggled to get admitted under the rules of evidence).

I assume these inconsistencies were why Hunter’s team called Naomi Biden to testify. She had used the truck in which the gun was found to help move her boyfriend to New York days earlier, so she knew what it looked like when she gave it back. But rather than helping Hunter’s defense, it will end up matching the classic examples of circumstantial evidence.

You go to sleep and the ground is bare, you wake up and there’s snow on the ground, you have circumstantial evidence it snowed overnight.

Someone comes in from outside carrying a wet umbrella, you have circumstantial evidence it’s raining.

You give your dad his truck and it’s clean and the console is locked, but days later your aunt finds drug paraphernalia in it and the console guarding the gun has the lock broken?

Here’s how that testimony played out.

Q. When you took the truck from Washington D.C. to New York, what was the condition of the inside of the truck?

A. It was in good condition.

Q. By that I mean was there any laundry thrown around, any things that you could determine were left in the truck by your dad?

A. No.

Q. I want to talk about the Raptor truck a minute. Would you put up DX — can you look at Exhibit 12 in your book. So the condition of the truck is where we were at. I asked you what was inside and you said there was nothing particular left behind. When you gave the truck to your dad in New York, did you see strewn about, any, what we’ll call drug paraphernalia?

A. No.

Q. Did you see any white powder residue or anything like that?

A. No.

All the more so given the line of questioning from Leo Wise suggesting that, at a time Hunter was trying to collect the truck in the middle of the night, a drug dealer Zoe Kestan had identified, Franky, had gotten a code to access Hunter Biden’s Wells Fargo account.

Q. Did he tell you he was meeting with someone named Franky?

A. I don’t remember.

Q. Did he tell you that he had Franky come to his hotel room?

A. No. I don’t remember.

Q. I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you?

A. I don’t remember.

Q. Did he tell you he had given someone named Franky an access code to his Wells Fargo account?

A. No.

It’s clear now that prosecutors called Kestan for that testimony — that Hunter gave her and his drug dealers five minute codes to access his bank account — as much as anything else. Prosecutors have some idea who was making the cash withdrawals that, without the five minute codes, were just a proxy for drug purchases.

Not only will Naomi’s testimony provide circumstantial evidence that between the time she gave the truck back and the time Hallie searched it, Hunter had gotten and was using drugs.

But she displayed the tragedy of a family desperate to provide Hunter the love he needed to get and stay clean and instead be met with a wall of deceit. And I’m sure the Biden family is wondering, as I am, whether and if so what might have led Hunter to break the lock on his own console where he had a gun and from which two bullets were taken out of their box (but, according to Hallie, found loose in the console and disposed with the rest).

The trial as a whole has been a week-long display of unconditional love, a sharp contrast with the mob-like attack on rule of law from Trump and his supporters, a contrast that really should have been the focus of the Tiger Beat style trial coverage.

But this moment — the moment Naomi thought she might help her dad but instead may have sealed his prosecution — must have exhibited to the jury the heartbreak such unconditional love faces when supporting someone with addiction, something with which a number of jurors have first hand experience.

Hitjob Backlash

That might have sunk Hunter entirely and it still might.

But other witnesses yesterday completely discredited the testimony of Gordon Cleveland, the guy who sold Hunter the gun, the single witness to the two other counts charged, that Hunter lied on a gun form.

As I laid out here, Cleveland described that selling the gun to Hunter went this way.

  • Hunter Biden picks a gun
  • Cleveland hands Hunter Biden form 4473 to fill out as Hunter hands him his passport
  • Cleveland leaves the front room to copy the passport which, he claims, takes less time to do than it does with a driver’s license because it is not double-sided
  • Cleveland returns to the counter and watches Hunter as he fills out the gun form
  • Only then does Cleveland take the passport — but not the form — in the back to ask whether he can use the passport
  • He and Jason Turner return to the counter
  • Turner reviews the form and sees that Hunter hasn’t signed it
  • Turner then tells Hunter he needs to go get a second form of ID
  • Turner goes back into the back room to run the background check
  • Turner fills out the rest of the form — including dating Cleveland’s signature
  • Cleveland proceeds to sell Hunter a bunch of other things, some of which he claims to have consulted on, some of which — a utility tool and a pellet gun — he claims he did not

His former colleague, Jason Turner (whom the owner of the shop blamed for altering the document after the fact, but jurors don’t know that), offered an entirely different timeline. He described:

  • Cleveland puts form (which Hunter has not signed) and passport (and, Turner later claims, the gun) on stack of background checks Turner is doing
  • Before doing background check, he reviews the paperwork and sees Hunter has not signed it
  • Turner brings the form and passport to Cleveland and — without ever speaking to Hunter — tells Cleveland that Hunter needs to sign the form and provide a second form of ID
  • Turner than stood by the back office door and watched as Cleveland got Hunter to sign the form and provide a second form of ID
  • Turner runs the background check
  • Turner fills out the form and in the process records the car registration (and the passport)
  • Turner brings the form and the gun back out to Cleveland
  • He never speaks to Hunter
  • Palimere was not in the gun shop and witnesses and witnesses none of this

The shop owner, Ron Palimere (the guy who has a proffer agreement immunizing truthful testimony), offered a third story:

  • At some point Palimere comes over to the store from his pawn shop because he has been informed there is a celebrity customer
  • Cleveland comes back into the office with the form and the passport
  • Cleveland asks if he can use just the passport for ID
  • Palimere says he can
  • Palimere does so because he was trying to avoid holding up the sale

The gun shop owner — the one guy with immunity — says he approved selling the gun without getting proper ID. The guy on the hook for the background check, Turner, claims he instructed Cleveland that the gun could not be sold without a second ID. And Cleveland, the guy who signed the form, says Turner interacted with Hunter and via that process got a second form of ID. Statutes of limitation have expired on the sale itself — Weiss was too busy chasing Hunter to figure out whether a still-active gun dealer has a practice of letting celebrities buy guns without proper paperwork — but they have not for any document alteration in 2020 or 2021, and if either man provably lied on the stand, they could face perjury charges.

All this might pass unnoticed to the jury. But I have to imagine they’d be surprised by Turner’s insistence that he recorded the car registration in the form, when no such thing is recorded on the form.

Q. You see the books next to it, line 18(b), right under it?

A. Correct.

Q. It says supplemental government issued documentation, if the identification document does not show current residence, government issued photo identification, do you see that?

A. Yes.

Q. If it doesn’t show residence, do you see that?

A. Correct.

Q. You a moment ago said that the passport doesn’t have somebody’s address?

A. Correct.

Q. Then you said that you told Mr. Cleveland something, right?

A. He needed to get further government issued identification with an address on it.

Q. Right. And if he did, what would you do with that?

A. I would have written it right in there.

Q. But you don’t see such writing in there, do you?

A. When I wrote that out, I wrote the car registration.

Q. You don’t see such a writing in there, do you?

A. When I wrote that out, I wrote car registration.

Q. When you wrote this out, you wrote car registration here or car registration there?

A. 18(b), car registration.

Q. You wrote it?

A. I wrote it.

Q. Where is it?

A. I wrote vehicle registration in there.

Q. I’m asking you if you did and this is the form, where is it on the form that you say you wrote?

A. It’s not there.

The conflicting stories of the gun shop employees — particularly Turner’s testimony that he ordered Cleveland to do something that Cleveland says Turner did — certainly undermines Cleveland’s credibility, and therefore his value as a witness to the way in which Hunter filled out the form.

But as I’ve described there is another element of the offense to both the form-related charges, beyond just that Hunter knowingly lied on the form. One requires that a false claim be material to the sale; in this case, the gun shop owner testified that not having proper ID was not material to this sale. The other arises from the obligations on the gun shop to keep proper paperwork, which Turner’s testimony makes clear they did not (though discussion of which remained largely barred by Judge Noreika’s order prohibiting discussion of the later alterations).

Even without knowing that the form got doctored years after the fact, jurors may have reasonable doubt about what actually happened here.

And the conflicting testimony may oblige David Weiss to do something about it, something his prosecutors have been trying to avoid.

Somewhere between three and four years ago, according to Palimere, Turner altered a form in violation of instructions that Turner acknowledged are right there on the form. The men gave irreconcilable testimony on the stand.

If you’re going to prosecute Hunter Biden for lying on a form, how do you avoid prosecuting a gun shop that doctors a form after the fact? In other words, one of these guys risks joining Alexander Smirnov in legal hot water, because the imperative to prosecute Joe Biden’s son has revealed that one after another after another after another person did something really shady to make sure he’d be prosecuted.

DEA’s Los Angeles traffic expert

All of which may lead jurors to ask what they are doing here — not least, why they have spent days of their lives seeing evidence that Hunter Biden used drugs anytime other than the days leading up to October 11 (showing his mindset when he purchased the gun) and between then and October 23 (when Hallie disposed of it), when he wrote a book admitting to just that.

Prosecutors have buried the jury with one of the few things not in contention: that Hunter Biden struggled with addiction, with periods of sobriety and periods of desperate addiction.

The absurdity of all this may have come into focus on Friday during the testimony of Joshua Romig, the DEA expert brought in to to translate for jurors topics that were not in dispute.

As Romig described, his day job is investigating drug trafficking, including “some firearm offenses when it comes to drug traffickers.” But it is the trafficking itself that DEA is trying to shut down.

I did that for over five of the years that I was assigned to the DA’s office, was just investigate drug trafficking offenses. I was very briefly assigned to the warrant unit before I got hired by DEA, because my boss didn’t want me to get involved in anymore court cases because he knew I was leaving. And then since I have been a DEA agent, the only thing, we’re a single mission agency, all we do is investigate drug trafficking. There are nuances to those drug trafficking cases, we investigate money laundering when it comes to drugs, we investigate some firearm offenses when it comes to drug traffickers, theft of firearms, but my primary responsibility is to investigate drug trafficking.

Derek Hines — he of the sawdust as cocaine — started Romig’s testimony with a focus on how the drug trade works, which led Abbe Lowell to object and this contentious sidebar.

MR. HINES: It’s not going to be a long road, I’m merely establishing if the jury understands what cocaine is and generally where it comes from to get to its source distribution points, and that forms the basis for Mr. Romig to testify about how he knows what the drugs are and how the language works in the drug trade so he can give an opinion to the messages which I seek to put up. This won’t be a long road.

MR. LOWELL: Ten feet, 2 miles, what’s the length of the road?

MR. HINES: Not as long as the roads you travel, Mr. Lowell.

Then Hines launched into a review of communications from times other than October 2018 that continued for 37 minutes.

Lowell responded by going on at length himself, noting that all the communications Romig reviewed were for times other than October 2018, and with two exceptions, there were no communications with drug references from that period, neither of which required an expert to interpret them.

Q. You see the date, these are now October of 2018; right?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Take a look at those. All right. If you go to the next page, please. And you see those texts?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. Okay. Now, you see on the 13th, go back one, please, Mr. Radic. Now go forward one, and go forward one. Okay. Look at those texts. Go forward one. Go forward one. That’s still in October of ’18. Please go forward one. Would you go another one? Do you see a reference to a Bernard at 10:13; right?

A. Yes. 119.

Q. Do you see that one?

A. I do.

Q. You didn’t do any independent investigation of who Bernard is or whether he even exists did you?

A. No, I didn’t do any investigation in this case.

Q. Got it.

A. I just was provided the messages that you see in front of you.

Q. And no need to interpret, because there is a word dealer there, so you didn’t need to interpret that one?

A. A lot of these messages don’t need much interpretation for me, correct.

Q. Go to the next one. That’s to Rows 125. Please go one more, please. I’m sorry, go back, you saw there is a reference in that to sleeping on a car, smoking crack, you don’t need to interpret that?

A. I don’t think I need to interpret that, no, sir.

Q. You don’t know whether that’s accurate or not, whether that’s where he was at the time; right? A. I don’t.

Q. Next one. Look at those. Next one, please, Mr. Radic. And again, we’re in October of 2018, right?

A. Correct.

Q. If you go to the next one, take a look at those. Like, for example, 1:35 on the 16th of October is one that says “hey buddy, it’s Richie Jones, checking in”, that’s no reference to drugs or anything like that, right?

A. It doesn’t appear to be, no.

Q. Go to the next one, Mr. Radic. With that. Go to one more, please. Okay. We’re in the end of October 2018. Go to one more. 1:49. And we’re still in October. Right? And then the next one. Do you see that’s at the going into November and after, do you see that?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. When you reviewed this chart before you came to court or at any point in your investigation, in what I just showed you from the period of time from August of 2018 through November of ’18, there is no reference in what you saw or analyzed of 1.4, is there, in those texts that I just went through with you?

A. No, I’m not sure when that 1.4 text was, but no, not in the ones we just reviewed.

Q. No reference or photo of any scale with white rocks on it in the texts I identified for you between August and November of 2018; correct?

A. Correct.

Q. No reference to baby powder in that period of time?

A. Correct.

Q. No reference to soft stuff in that period of time?

A. Correct.

Q. No reference to party favor in that period of time?

A. Correct. Q. No reference to grams in that period of time?

A. Correct.

Q. No reference to chore boy in that period of time?

A. That’s correct.

Q. No reference to one full in that period of time?

A. Correct.

Q. No reference to fentan in that period of time?

A. Yes. Correct.

Q. And no reference of a ball in that period of time?

A. Correct.

Q. Those last 4 or 5 were all the way into 2019 as we went through on the screen a moment ago, right?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. And in that period of time, there is no pictures of a drug being used, right, no holding of a pipe, right?

A. None that I reviewed.

Q. No bags on a scale, right?

A. No, sir.

Q. No bags at all?

A. Correct.

Q. No videos of him weighing any drugs, right?

A. None that I reviewed, no.

Q. So all that you identified and what I went through with you, were for the years I said before and after the period of August of 2018 through the time that we identified those in November of ’18, that would be a fair statement I just made, isn’t it?

A. With the exception of the October text that we talked about, where he said he was smoking crack.

Q. I did those too. We identified those too. You’ll agree with me, no pictures, no photos, no scales, no white rocks, no chore boy, no fentan, no ball, no ounce, no grams, none of that?

A. Yes, sir, outside those two messages, you are correct.

Romig did describe that the size of cash withdrawals Hunter was making were consistent with drug use, but admitted he didn’t do any analysis of Hunter’s cash flow at the time.

And it’s not just the fact that Derek Hines (he of the sawdust as cocaine) asked this DEA expert to spend his time analyzing comms from periods other than October 2018. More importantly (as Lowell elicited), the DEA doesn’t spend its time reviewing the comms of end users, because the goal is to break up large scale drug trafficking.

Q. In your introducing your expertise and what you are testifying about, you indicated that your job and the job of your colleagues is to be trying to break up large scale distribution of drugs?

A. Correct.

Q. Usually not individual users?

A. That’s correct.

Q. And you don’t have any reason to understand that what Mr. Biden is on trial for has anything to do with him being a distributor?

A. Nothing that I have reviewed would indicate that.

Q. And you’re not investigating, or you didn’t investigate him for the time he was using?

A. I have never done that, no.

Q. You went over all those texts that had people’s names and numbers, some of which you just went over with Mr. Hines, and there were people that seemed to be the distributors, or at least the people that were selling him narcotics. Did you see those people’s texts?

A. Yes, sir.

Q. So as your job to try to break up large scale distribution, did you look into those people?

[snip]

Q. My question was, you didn’t do that, not that you don’t know that it was done, not withstanding that you said your goal —

A. The DEA, as far as I know, but specifically me, or any of the groups that I supervise did not investigate any of the people based on my review of the sellers in this investigation.

Derek Hines’ DEA witness made it clear that this was not an effort to combat drug trafficking. Nor was it an effort to analyze even primarily the communications Hunter sent during the period he owned a gun.

This testimony put the issue of priorities before the jury.

As Manuel Estrada described when explaining to HJC why his top aides advised against getting involved in this case, there are — there should be — far higher priorities.

A Just around that. I mean, just to put it into perspective, it was a crisis mode when I came in because one of the major areas we have is national security. National Security covers not just foreign actors. It includes terrorist actors. It includes domestic extremism. And I’ve had to double the size of that division during the time I’ve been there, and we still can’t handle all of the cases we have there. Q And that’s today, even doubled, you don’t have sufficient attorneys to handle all of the cases? A Well, that’s true in every one of our areas. We don’t have enough AUSAs to handle our national security matters. We could be doing every AUSA in my office could be doing PPP fraud cases we have so much PPP fraud. Every Q PPP is the

A That’s the COVID fraud, COVID19 money fraud. Every AUSA in my office could be doing healthcare fraud cases we have so much healthcare fraud. We have to deploy our resources in the most effective manner to address the needs of the district. As I mentioned, we have a fentanyl epidemic. That includes not just deathresulting cases, it includes going after cartels which are distributing these pills, not just in powder form but in pill form. We routinely seize over a million pills at a time from vehicles, and we need to prosecute those cases. Each pill could be a death. And routinely now we’re finding cartels transporting fentanyl in liquid form, which is a new thing that they’re doing. So we have to do those cases.

We have a violent crime crisis where, for a variety of reasons, including some of the local policies, there has been an increase, certainly in our view, of violent crime and use of handguns in crimes. We have taco vendors on the streets getting robbed at gunpoint. So we are doing more of those types of offenses than we ever have before. We don’t have enough resources to do those.

But David Weiss reneged on a plea deal to chase a hoax from someone with ties to Russian intelligence and since then has been throwing everything he had — including this DEA expert’s time — reading texts from Hunter Biden from periods not remotely close to the period he owned a gun.

Judge Noreika has, properly, been working hard to guard against the jury nullifying this vote, voting that this whole thing is just so stupid and such a waste of time.

But Jeebus: with the human tragedy and the increasing consequences for those who campaigned to target Hunter Biden, what the fuck is the point. What are we doing such that the most important legal case in America serves primarily to subject Joe Biden’s family to the tragedy of his son’s addiction all over again?

Fridays with Nicole Sandler

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Reading, Rather than Bringing, Receipts

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Here’s an interesting detail from yesterday’s Hunter Biden trial.

After getting Hallie Biden’s testimony — which probably got prosecutors what they need to prove Count 3, the possession charge (though Hunter’s team will bring at least one witness to discredit Hallie’s story) — they called Joshua Marley, the second of two guys who responded to Hallie’s police report on October 23, 2018.

The first guy to respond was a guy named Vincent Clemons.

Prosecutor Derek Hines walked Marley, the second guy to respond to Hallie’s police report, through what he represented Marley had heard Hunter Biden say in response to Clemons’ questions of Hunter Biden.

Q. Was he interviewed in your presence, and did you participate in an interview with him?

A. He was interviewed in my presence, I don’t know if I participated much.

Q. How far away were you standing from him during the course of this interview?

A. If I recall correctly, just a couple of feet.

Q. Who else was with you?

A. Sergeant Clemons.

Q. Was Sergeant Clemons asking the questions and you were sort of recording the answers?

A. Correct.

[snip]

Q. Do you believe he was the victim because his handgun had been stolen, or was that at least the investigation at that time?

A. Yes.

Q. And is that how it was reported at least?

A. Yes, that the gun was removed from his vehicle.

Q. Did Hunter Biden say anything about who owned the gun that was missing?

A. Yeah, he said he had purchased the gun on either the 12th or the 13th from StarQuest Shooter.

Q. Hunter Biden had said he himself had purchased the gun?

A. Yes.

Q. Did he say anything about how he discovered the gun was missing?

A. I believe he just went into his vehicle and found it was missing from the center console.

Q. Did he say that?

A. I think so.

Q. Did you prepare a report?

A. Yes.

Q. Would that be reflected in your report, if he had said it?

A. Yes.

Q. Would it refresh your recollection to see that report?

A. Sure, yeah.

MR. HINES: May I approach, Your Honor?

THE COURT: You may.

BY MR. HINES: Q. Could you read that second sentence there, starting with that word?

A. To be advised —

Q. No, just read it to yourself?

A. I’m sorry, okay.

Q. Does that refresh your recollection as to whether or not Hunter Biden said where he had — his gun had been?

A. Yes.

Q. What did he say?

A. That it was missing from the center console of the vehicle.

Q. He indicated where he had purchased the gun?

A. Yes.

Q. What was the location where he had purchased it?

A. The StarQuest Shooters gun shop on Concord Pike.

This was overkill. One of the elements of the offense on Count Three, the easiest to prove, is that Hunter Biden knew he possessed the gun. The easiest way to prove that is that Hunter signed the gun purchase form and then, 11 days later, found it gone from his truck console and immediately texted Hallie Biden about it.

But in an effort to get Marley to describe Hunter saying that he had found the gun missing from the center console of his truck, Derek Hines used the Delaware Police Report to refresh Marley’s memory so he could describe what Hunter said.

Back in May, in an effort to prevent Hunter from pointing out that no one charged him in the five years since he bought the gun, Hines argued that this form is inadmissible hearsay.

First, the defendant states “both parties may still seek the admission of . . . the Delaware State Police incident report . . .” Response at 1. The report is inadmissible because it is hearsay and not covered by any exception. Fed. R. Evid. 801.

Indeed, it was not admitted yesterday. Hines simply used it to refresh Marley’s memory.

On cross, Abbe Lowell walked Marley through how this report got written up. First, he got Marley to describe that he and Clemons didn’t so much write the police report together. They both wrote their own separate reports, with their own names on the bottom of the pages they wrote.

Q. Did you collaborate with Sergeant Clemons to write the police report that you were shown to refresh your recollection?

A. Collaborate as far as, I did my report and he also wrote his report on his own.

Q. Say that last part?

A. He also did a report.

Q. So if in the police report of that day at the bottom of the page it has the name Sergeant Clemons, does that mean what’s on the page was his or it’s something that you both would have collaborated about, but he wrote it?

Noting that Hines has already used the report to refresh Marley’s memory, Lowell then used it to get Marley to note which parts of the report he wrote and which Clemons wrote.

BY MR. LOWELL: Q. You were shown this to refresh your recollection. Can you do that again for me? Just take a look at that, look down, I want you to see the bottom, I want you to see where there are names, and tell us whether or not that refreshes your recollection as to who is responsible for the words on a page?

A. So this one would be myself.

Q. This one, meaning the front page?

A. Correct.

Q. Now if you’ll turn to the second page.

A. Also myself.

Q. Okay. Third page?

A. Still myself.

He got Marley to describe that the fourth page, where Clemons’ report (which includes the report on what Hallie said that day, which no one claims Marley heard, as well as what Hunter said — the part Hines had Marley claim to remember as overkill). Lowell also got Marley to note that Clemons’ report was all typed up in a nice form; it was far more than notes.

Q. Now on the fourth page, if your report has again, as I was asking, a name at the bottom, does that reflect what?

A. That would be Sergeant Clemons.

Q. That’s not your writing, if he asked questions, that’s what is reflected in the report?

A. Right. So that would be his report.

Q. Okay. I understand. Did you review what he wrote?

A. No.

Q. And whether he wrote this, it’s all typed up in a nice form. That’s not what was done on the scene, right?

A. No, this would be later.

Q. Later the day, later the next day, do you know when?

A. We have three days to complete a report. So I’m not exactly sure.

Q. Okay. Before it becomes finalized, whatever that means, do you read it? The report?

A. Before I submit it in for approval?

Q. Yes.

A. Yes, I read it.

Lowell got Marley to describe that he doesn’t know when Clemons’ part of the report was submitted. It might even be a supplement, one that — so long as it was submitted under the same number — could be submitted any time after.

Q. At the point at which you did that for this form, had Mr. Clemons already put his part in?

A. I don’t know.

Q. But you see it in the report that it’s a number of pages, some his and some yours?

A. Correct. So it would be two separate reports under. the same number, so like a supplement.

Q. So part could happen one time, and then the next part happens another time, and at the end of the process it’s one report which has all the parts in it?

A. Yes, if it’s the same report number, yes, you could do supplements at any given time, you know, a day later, a month later if new evidence comes up or whatever.

Q. Got it. If there is something about what Ms. Biden said, you weren’t in her earshot, but it would be in the report if Mr. Clemons took that interview?

A. I would imagine.

Q. Did you know, did you review what it was he wrote down that she said?

A. No.

Q. And you have never looked at that?

A. Not that I remember.

Could have been submitted a month later! It was actually three days later, October 26.

Lowell gets Marley to admit that he was only maybe in earshot of the part of the interview where Hunter admitted — that bit Hines introduced as overkill to substantiate the easiest element of the offense for the easiest Count to prove — that he bought the gun.

Q. So he’s interviewing Mr. Biden, you’re not doing that?

A. Yes.

Q. He would be responsible for putting down what you were refreshed as to what Mr. Biden said?

A. Yes.

Q. When you were doing that, you were refreshed that he admitted right away that he had been the one to buy the gun?

A. Yes.

Let me interject and say one reason why Lowell is doing this is because in the part of the report that Clemons wrote (which was clearly designed to be a partisan hit job, including reference to the Biden Family), the part that Marley’s sure he did not hear, he described Hallie Biden saying she looked in Hunter’s truck because she suspected, “I think he is screwing around on me.” Not because she thought he had done drugs that day, but because she was jealous. Lowell needs to get that story in to undercut Hallie’s claim that she saw Hunter overnight on October 22, and thought he may have been using drugs, almost the only thing she remembers clearly from a very traumatic day over five years ago.

That might be all Lowell was preparing here. But in the process, he showed that Marley claimed to remember something that he maybe didn’t hear. And, more importantly, he got Marley to describe that Clemons’ part of the report could have been submitted anytime after he himself, Marley, opened the case number with his own report.

Lowell also got Marley to describe that when he went, by himself, to StarQuest to find the serial number for the gun, they may have simply given him the serial number by reading off the computer terminal, which he then copied.

Q. And when you went to StarQuest, you asked them if they had a record for the sale?

A. Yes.

Q. And did you — did they or did they just give you the serial number which is what you were looking for?

A. I’m not sure if they gave me a register receipt or they read it off the computer terminal and I copied it and made the phone call and put it in NCIC.

Lowell notes that there’s no copy of the receipt itself, nor of the Form 4473. If the paper documentation is not there, he didn’t get it.

Q. On the report you made, there is no copy on of what StarQuest gave you that day if they gave you anything?

A. Okay.

Q. I’m asking?

A. Oh, yeah, if it’s not.

Q. If it’s not there, it’s not part of the report?

A. Right.

Q. You might have just asked for the serial number?

A. Yes.

Q. You didn’t ask for a ATF Form 4473 on that day?

A. No.

Q. You just wanted the serial number?

A. Exactly.

Q. Were you involved after that, in getting the people at StarQuest to send you the actual form that was filled out by the gun buyer?

A. No.

Q. And then after you did that, after you went to StarQuest you didn’t go back, then your role in this would then after, to then write your report?

A. That was it.

We of course know that StarQuest didn’t print out the receipt for Marley. That receipt didn’t get first printed out until 2020, when StarQuest owner Ron Parlimere and some buddies and … Vincent Clemons were leaking this story to the press.

In 2020, Parlimere and Clemons were leaking the story to the press, and also “needing to get their stories straight.”

It also reveals a now-exposed attempt by the gun store to fabricate a false narrative about the gun sale. Palimere said the addition of the seller transaction serial number (“5,653”) may have been added on October 26, 2018. (TAB 4, Palimere FD-302 at 4). He said the vehicle registration reference was added in 2021. Yet, the government provided WhatsApp communications from October 2020 and February 2021 between Palimere, friends of his, and then-Delaware state trooper Vincent Clemons3 (see TABs 6 – 6C), all of which refer to the form, a plan to send it to others, needing to get their stories straight about what occurred in 2020, and wanting the gun sale issue and the form exposed during the Presidential campaign.

3 Not to be lost is the fact that Clemons was the Delaware State Police officer who first arrived at Janssens’ grocery store on October 23, 2018 when Hallie Biden threw a bag containing the handgun into a trash can in front of the store. It was Clemons who took statements about the handgun from both Hallie and Hunter Biden and was part of filling out an official police report on the issue. Two years later, he is in the communications with Palimere about the Form 4473, one of which states: “Yep your side is simple – Hunter bought a gun from you, he filled out the proper forms and the Feds approved him for a purchase.” (emphasis added). Palimere later responded, “I’ll keep it short and sweet as well: Hunter bought a gun. The police visited me asking for verification of the purchase and that’s all I can recall from that day. It was over 2 years ago.” (TAB 6B, 10/26/20 Palimere-Clemons Texts at 4, 6.) The reference to filling out the “proper forms” is not lost on defense counsel given what transpired thereafter. And, despite the importance of Clemons (e.g., the person who actually took the statements), the Special Counsel is foregoing him as a witness to call two other Delaware officers instead.

Now, as I said, it was overkill for Hines to use the police report to refresh Marley’s memory to remember something he maybe didn’t witness in an attempt to get even more proof of something that Hunter is not contesting — that he knew he owned the gun — to prove the easiest charge.

But as I’ve laid out, Count 1 — one of the two paperwork charges that requires proving Hunter’s mindset at the moment he filled out a form on October 12, 2018 — has a materiality component. Prosecutors have to prove that the false statement was material to whether they would sell him a gun or not.

And Count 2 charges a false statement on a document that the gun shop “is required … to be kept in the [gun shop’s] records.”

Abbe Lowell probably would have gotten there anyway, even if Hines hadn’t gone for overkill on the easiest element of offense on the easiest charge to prove. But by focusing on the form, he got Marley to make how the documentation from StarQuest got recorded and shared with the state of Delaware as they were conducting a criminal investigation in which they believed Hunter to be the victim an issue.

He laid the groundwork to get witness testimony that, in fact, the gun shop wasn’t complying with their record-keeping requirements, and they weren’t requiring all the elements of the form to be accurate and filled in before they sold Hunter a gun.

I think it likely that Judge Noreika would exclude it even though it is solidly material to both those charges. She said as much on Wednesday. (In a side bar, she even suggested that Hunter should not have listed his Dad’s address as his home address, citing a recent case where she sentenced someone to a year for that.) Noreika is dead-set on protecting the gun shop from facing any legal exposure from the trial of Hunter Biden, even if it means he cannot confront his accusers.

But what the gun shop shared with Delaware when — and the fact that Delaware didn’t get the paperwork they otherwise might have — came into evidence yesterday as a result of Derek Hines’ to go for overkill on evidence relating to the easier charge to prove.

How to Think about the Hunter Biden “Laptop”

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As noted, yesterday the summary FBI witness in the Hunter Biden trial, Erika Jensen, testified that she did not do an analysis to find out whether any of the files on the laptop attributed to Hunter Biden, “had been tampered with, added to, or subtracted?” She also testified that, as someone who had, “a small basis of my understanding of how [FBI’s digital forensics experts] work” and having not done such an analysis, had not “seen any evidence whatsoever from the data [she] reviewed from [the] laptop to suggest that there was tampering”

Her job was not to do such an assessment. Her job was to do a summary of a very narrow cherrypick of files prosecutors asked her to summarize.

Indeed, her further testimony revealed how useless her opinion on the laptop is. Aside from matching the laptop serial number with one of at least seven laptops Hunter had used in the two years leading up to its delivery to John Paul Mac Isaac in 2019, the only other validation Jensen described was the emailed receipt JPMI sent Hunter Biden’s publicly identifiable email account on April 17, 2019, which is utterly and completely useless to validate the laptop. Jensen further described that she didn’t review any emails beyond a small handful prosecutors gave her. The file did not include the kind of metadata that would be necessary to assess its usefulness.

The investigative team had never validated whether anything had been added to the laptop before October 20, 2020. No one made an index before handing over the data in discovery to Hunter Biden’s team.

While everyone was focusing on Jensen’s testimony yesterday, Zoe Kestan actually gave far more interesting — and useful, for assessing the reliability of his data — testimony about Hunter’s digital life. She described, for example, that fairly early in their relationship, Hunter “sent me images of his credit card and asked me to call hotels and find somewhere for us to stay that night.” Kasten described that Hunter would get 5-minute codes and send them to her and to drug dealers so they could pull money from his ATM without his ATM card. She described how, sometime around March 2018, the two went together to drop broken devices off at an Apple store, but he left and she finished that process.

We went out for dinner one night, we went to the Apple store because his phone and his computer were broken, and he had to leave in the middle, so I dropped off, and you know, submitted his phone and laptop at the Apple store for him.

She testified he lost maybe 5 or 6 phones in the period they were in a relationship, a period intermittently spanning a year (though I think this might be high). She described trying to locate him once by logging into his bank account (the credentials for which were on her machine) to see where he was withdrawing money from an ATM. She described that he would do his business from her laptop.

This is just one person! And she had the means to totally pwn his life. As, too, undoubtedly, some of the drug dealers who supported his habit.

This is the kind of thing I’ve focused on for a long time. In the depths of his addiction, Hunter Biden exercised almost no digital security, meaning his girlfriends, his drug dealers, his sex workers, and even the junkies he partied with all had easy means to compromise his devices. And every time Hunter lost a device — the five to six Kasten testified to, the seven or so laptops he had over that year, two more phones she wouldn’t have known about — every single time, it would present the opportunity for someone to take over his digital identity as a bunch of right wing Trump supporters have since and tamper with it.

With all that said, I want to address all the reasons why no one should be admitting Hunter Biden’s digital data into a criminal trial without proving the provenance of each message.

Start with his iCloud. Contrary to widespread belief — belief sown by false claims from prosecutors parroted by credulous journalists — it is not true that all the data on the laptop was backed up to Hunter’s iCloud account.

As I have shown, only half the messages admitted in the trial came from one of two device backups saved to iCloud (these numbers are based off an early draft of the summary).

But there’s a mistaken belief that everything on his iCloud had to be authentic.

That’s because people like Kasten — and people who undoubtedly have a lot less affection for Hunter Biden — have devices that include the login data for Hunter’s iCloud or for phones that were set to back up automatically to iCloud. People with his devices might also be able to access his two main Gmail accounts, his RosemontSeneca one (which frequently suffered what Google believed to be compromises but which might just be Hunter trying to get in), or the droidhunter account he used for adult entertainment (which was accessed by a burner phone in a period when the droidhunter account had access to his iCloud during the period his digital life was packed onto to the laptop that would end up at the FBI).

The reason Hunter’s cloud data was vulnerable to tampering stems from the way he kept his own — and, per Kasten, his associates’ — laptops. We know from the hard drives shared publicly that that laptop included means to access Hunter’s iCloud, an iPad backed up exclusively to the laptop, the phone from which the most important texts used in his trial were extracted (protected by password), and the cookies and passwords to get into much of the rest of his digital life.

What everyone knows as the [multiple hard drives] copied from the laptop is better thought of as a set of a significant chunk of Hunter’s digital activity (much of it unavailable elsewhere), as well as keys that a sophisticated actor could use to access what was stored in the cloud.

And a whole lot of dick pics.

If we believe John Paul Mac Isaac, then he delivered that entire package of Hunter Biden’s digital life plus another two laptops,to the Mac Shop on April 12, 2019. (Remember that there’s another laptop in the wild, which purportedly was left at Keith Ablow’s guest cottage during the period some of this data was being assembled.)

Whether you believe that part of the story or not is not actually all that important. Except insofar as it raises the chances that what went into JPMI’s store was packaged up to maximal damage. Except insofar as right wingers and gossip columnists posing as journalists claim it gives them license to do anything they want with the data. Indeed, the way that story has been used as license to do something grotesque is about all that story does, whether true or not.

Which may be the point.

JPMI has made it clear he started snooping long before he claims his terms and conditions gave him property rights over the device (even if that extended to the data on the device, which Hunter’s team argues it does not). JPMI’s claims about what alarmed him enough to reach out the FBI and Congress and Donald Trump’s personal lawyer aren’t backed by the documents on the laptop. JPMI’s claims about what laptops he received that day don’t match the laptop shared with the FBI.

In other words, there are gaping holes all over JPMI’s story, which differs from the FBI’s story about what they did with the laptop in key ways.

And yet, that didn’t lead the FBI to validate the laptop associated with the iCloud account of the (then) former Vice President’s son beyond confirming that some but not all of the data matched what was in Hunter’s iCloud.

Whether you believe JPMI or not, he has copped to giving Rudy Giuliani, members of Congress, and through them, the whole world, the gateway to Hunter Biden’s digital life. There’s no defense of that, and yet virtually the entire DC press corps likes to pretend they’re doing ethical journalism if they whitewash it.

There’s not much, yet, to add to the discussion above of how David Weiss used the laptop. As noted above, the FBI never did real due diligence on this laptop.

There’s a lot yet to learn — including whether there was a connection between FBI getting a warrant on the laptop and then DOJ Chief of Staff Will Levi’s text to Bill Barr the next day, “laptop on way to you.”

We do know that the (known) December 2019 warrant only permitted the search of the laptop for the three tax crimes charged against Hunter Biden in Los Angeles (which seems inconsistent with the subpoena that described money laundering). The FBI did not have authority to search the laptop or data from Hunter’s iCloud for gun related evidence until December (though Agent Jensen’s summary of the evidence submitted at trial cited earlier warrants for reasons that have not been aired at trial).

The [hard drive containing the contents of the] laptop is not the same thing as the laptop entered into evidence this week.

That’s something about a bazillion trolls who responded to something I said in 2023, about the disseminated laptop: that it had been tampered with.

It has.

There are known (albeit minor) alterations on the content of the hard drive that Rudy Giuliani shared with the NYPost and, after that, the entire world. There are reportedly more significant compromises, which we might learn about if Rudy’s bankruptcy doesn’t entirely kill Hunter Biden’s lawsuit of Rudy. There was far more significant alteration done on two other sets of data: one, disseminated by Guo Wengui (including some of the files taken down by Twitter in October 2020), and another, released by Jack Maxey.

And there were different public and non-public means of using the hard drives passed on from JPMI to access further Hunter Biden data. Garrett Ziegler, for example, fully admits he compromised the encryption of the iPhone backed up to iTunes on the laptop (though in his response to Hunter Biden’s lawsuit, claims it was legal because the drive he hacked had never belonged to Hunter). Vish Burra is more outspoken about having hacked Hunter Biden.

Many many many of the people who froth over content from the laptop — and journalists who whitewash the hit job against Hunter — don’t know there are multiple versions of altered laptops that relied on multiple means to access (or create) the data.

Many — including many journalists — have just decided Hunter must a horrible person so they are not obligated to care what really happened here.

Hunter Biden’s laptop is not any one thing. It’s not real or authentic or not. It is, rather, the shoddy state of affairs when an entire country enthusiastically exploits the fact that an addict’s digital life was in a permanent state of half-compromise for most if not all of the time of his addiction.

Update: Corrected spelling of Kestan’s last name.

Update: Fixed the super confusing reference about why the FBI didn’t respond differently to the compromise of Biden’s son.

Judge Noreika Risks Narrowing Hunter Biden’s Right to Confront His Accuser Even Further

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Gordon Cleveland, the man who sold Hunter Biden a gun without seeing an ID with an address on it on October 12, 2018, did not finish testifying at the Hunter Biden trial yesterday. When Abbe Lowell started walking him through the penalties on the gun shop and the guy who signed the form selling the gun, Derek Hines made an objection, leading to a contentious sidebar and a decision to finish Lowell’s cross-examination today.

During the sidebar, Judge Maryellen Noreika seemed inclined to further limit Hunter Biden’s ability to impeach Cleveland’s testimony (though will revisit it this morning).

After having prohibited Hunter Biden from talking about the possible crime the gun shop committed to cover up their own violation of the rules, Judge Noreika told Abbe Lowell that she would not permit him to ask any questions about the penalties on the gun salesman for selling a gun without proper ID. She went so far as to insinuate that Abbe Lowell should have objected when Derek Hines opened the door to such questions, but helpfully offered to strike the testimony that impeaches the testimony of Hines’ key witness.

The question of why the gun shop sold Hunter a gun relying just on a passport goes to the core of a premise Cleveland laid out about how he sold guns: First he makes a customer fill out form 4473 to make sure the gun sale is legal, and only after that does he sell things like ammunition.

Q. Why is it important for you as a salesman?

A. It’s important because after you fill in your personal information, there is a series of questions that can ultimately void the sale before it even gets all the way started with running the background, depending on what the answers are on that form.

[snip]

Q. After the gun is explained to him, the speed loader explained to him, the bullets are explained to him, and he has all that, is that on the counter?

A. Yes.

Q. And that’s when you deal with the form?

A. The form — the form was — no, so you got the sequence messed up. The guns and all that stuff was — I mean the gun, the ammo, and the speed loader was on the counter, but that was after the fact that the background check was already ran.

Q. So before the background check was already done, where was the handgun?

A. The handgun was already on the counter.

Q. Where are the bullets?

A. The bullets are on the shelf because we haven’t even discussed them before the background check.

If he never got a second form of ID, then his narrative of how he does sales — a narrative that is at the core of his claim to have witnessed Hunter Biden fill out the form — is suspect.

Cleveland’s current timeline of what happened that day is:

  • Hunter Biden picks a gun
  • Cleveland hands Hunter Biden form 4473 to fill out as Hunter hands him his passport
  • Cleveland leaves the front room to copy the passport which, he claims, takes less time to do than it does with a driver’s license because it is not double-sided
  • Cleveland returns to the counter and watches Hunter as he fills out the gun form
  • Only then does Cleveland take the passport — but not the form — in the back to ask whether he can use the passport
  • He and Jason Turner return to the counter
  • Turner reviews the form and sees that Hunter hasn’t signed it
  • Turner then tells Hunter he needs to go get a second form of ID
  • Turner goes back into the back room to run the background check
  • Turner fills out the rest of the form — including dating Cleveland’s signature
  • Cleveland proceeds to sell Hunter a bunch of other things, some of which he claims to have consulted on, some of which — a utility tool and a BB gun — he claims he did not (note, this may explain the 16 minutes that elapsed between the background check and the sale that I pointed out here)

To substantiate that he remained in the room while Hunter filled out the form, Cleveland said that he wouldn’t ask Turner to run a background check until he was sure the sale would be legal. But Turner ran the background check, without anyone recording receiving a second form of ID.

There are several reasons this goes to Cleveland’s credibility.

First, at least according to Abbe Lowell’s citations from a 302, in 2021 Cleveland told ATF Agent Hnat that his general practice is to get two forms of ID, but did not see a second form of ID from Hunter Biden.

Speaking of his general practice he said, “He then gathers the information provided by the customer for the background check, the customers two forms of identification . . .” (TAB 3, 10/12/21 ATF EF 3120 at 1, ¶2).

With specific reference to Biden, “He said he would provide the copy of the U.S. Passport and the firearm information on a sheet of paper to the person sending the background check in. Mr. Cleveland said he did not see the document with the ATF Form 4473 he was shown.” (TAB 3, 10/12/21 ATF EF 3120 at 2, ¶6) [Lowell’s italics, his bracketed comments omitted]

Since his representation that he generally gets two forms of ID but did not when he sold Hunter a gun appears inaccurate, it raises questions about whether the things he said yesterday that he did routinely — such as telling someone to answer the form truthfully — are true.

Q. Let’s go through each of those things you just said. You said he’s supposed to fill out the form truthfully?

A. Yes.

Q. You used those words truthfully?

A. Yes.

Q. Do you do that as a matter of practice?

A. Always.

Q. Why do you do that?

A. Because of the questions that are on the form.

Secondly, Cleveland’s sworn testimony yesterday is not entirely consistent with his testimony weeks ago, in a way that makes his signature on the form problematic, on precisely the issue to whic Hines raised an objection.

Last month, Cleveland said that after speaking to Jason Turner, he told Hunter that they would need to see a second form of ID.

When Biden presented his passport as identification, Cleveland went into the back and asked Ronald Palimere and Jason Turner if it could be used. Cleveland recalls going back out to Biden and saying something to the effect that if Biden was going to use a passport, they would need another form of identification.

Here’s what he said yesterday.

Q. Now, at this point, what happens next after you witnessed Mr. Biden filling out the entire page 1?

A. So, that’s when I went to go get clarity on the passport.

Q. When you say get clarity, why did you get clarity on the passport?

A. I figured it was all right, I just needed to double-check because it was my first time using a passport, and I know like as far as with the ID’s, it’s a form of ID, you’re able to use that for a lot of different things.

Derek Hines then coached Cleveland to say that he had been told it was okay to sell a gun relying on the passport.

Q. Did you have a discussion with them?

A. Yes. I said I think the passport is okay, just double-checking.

Q. Let me stop you there. So you had a discussion with them because you had a question about passport, correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Now, at that point did you go — end up going back to the sales floor after your question had been answered?

A. Yeah.

Q. To your satisfaction?

A. Yep, I went right back to the sales floor.

Q. And what did you believe you could do at that point in the transaction?

A. You could take the passport, I was told.

Only after describing directing Hunter to sign the form (which is on the second page and, if accurate, undercuts Abbe Lowell’s claim that Hunter might have referred to the definitions in the back), as Cleveland describes, did Turner purportedly tell Hunter to go get a second form of ID.

Q. What happens next after you see Mr. Biden sign the form and date it?

A. What happened next is Jason said also we would need for the passport, another form of like identification stating his address, it could be a bill, or it could be a vehicle registration.

Q. What’s the next thing you observe?

A. I observe Mr. Biden leave out and then come back in.

Cleveland never saw a second form of ID, but nevertheless signed a form saying the “information recorded in Sections B and D is true, correct, and complete” and attesting to “my verification of the identification recorded in question 18.”

It was this section that Lowell was asking Cleveland if he had read when Hines objected, which is material not only for Cleveland’s credibility, but for a retention aspect of one of the charges.

Lowell had not yet elicited Cleveland’s testimony from a few weeks ago, in which he said,

Cleveland would not have paid attention to the paperwork side of the sale because he had already done his part by working with the customer and making the sale.

The comment undercuts Cleveland’s claim to have watched Hunter closely as he filled out the form. And it undercuts Cleveland’s description, yesterday, of walking Hunter through the difference between ammunition types and speed-loaders, parts of the sale which he describes taking place after the paperwork was done.

Here’s how the objection and sidebar went in — with Derek Hines making a desperate bid to force Lowell to finish his cross-examination in 15 minutes so as to prevent him from having the evening to review the testimony of Hines’ single witness to two alleged crimes charged against Hunter Biden.

LOWELL. On page 3, if you’ll go up above, I’m sorry, on page 3, go back down a little bit. On the right side of the column, the second paragraph, it reads, if the transfer/seller, that would be StarQuest, right?

A. Yes.

Q. Or the buyer discovers that a form is incomplete or improperly completed after the firearm has been transferred —

MR. HINES: I object, Your Honor.

THE COURT: All right. Let’s have a side-bar. (Side-bar discussion:)

MR. HINES: So the objection is not only it is outside the scope of direct, it is irrelevant what StarQuest did years later, with the form, and he’s driving towards that, it has no relevancy to whether or not Mr. Biden filled out the form.

THE COURT: Should I let the jury go for tonight?

MR. LOWELL: No, it’s a good time to let them go. Can I respond?

THE COURT: How much more do you have?

MR. LOWELL: For him, quite a lot.

THE COURT: Okay. All right.

MR. LOWELL: Well, I’m sorry, that’s stupid, I apologize.

Hines realizes that Lowell is about to have the night to review other problems with Cleveland’s testimony, and he tries to assert Cleveland’s right to go to work over Hunter’s Sixth Amendment rights.

MR. HINES: He drives a trash truck, he’s away from work.

MR. LOWELL: It won’t be over by 4:30 or even 4:45, and I’m — well, do you want to talk about this in open court before, or how do you want to do this?

THE COURT: I mean, if’s he not going to finish, are you going to finish by 5:00.

MR. LOWELL: Maybe, I don’t know how long it will take. I don’t want —

THE COURT: I’m just sensitive to the fact that he’s missing his work.

MR. LOWELL: Can I see how far — let me respond to his objection.

THE COURT: Yes.

When Lowell explains he should have the right to put it into the record that, having been told a second form of ID was necessary, Cleveland did not insist on seeing one but signed the form anyway, Noreika suggests that Lowell should have objected when Cleveland testified to something that puts his own credibility at issue. She offers to strike the testimony that makes Cleveland’s disinterest in completing documentation clear!

MR. LOWELL: I am not asking something you did years later, not doing that. I am indicating because he opened the door when he said something about somebody getting a second car registration or second form of identification, he said that, I didn’t, and so consequently, I need to ask him what that was.

THE COURT: No. You’re not putting that in. I ruled on that. I don’t think that he opened the door. You didn’t object or I guess, if you want me to strike what he said on that, I will consider it, but we’re not opening the door on that. [my emphasis]

Lowell tries again.

MR. LOWELL: So I cannot ask him, then, was a second form of identification given to him that moment.

THE COURT: At that moment. Why can’t they ask at that moment.

Hines says that because Cleveland doesn’t know whether Turner saw a second form of ID before signing a form that required one, he should not have to testify to that fact.

MR. HINES: He has no basis, he doesn’t know.

MR. LOWELL: To him.

THE COURT: You can say at that moment.

MR. LOWELL: Okay.

THE COURT: But if he misunderstands your question and starts talking about something later, we’re going to cut him off.

MR. LOWELL: Okay.

Noreika tries to resume testimony.

THE COURT: Members of the jury, we’re going to hopefully — (Sidebar discussion:)

MR. LOWELL: I want to be very fair to Mr. Cleveland, but to be fair to the jury, I don’t think I would finish by 5 o’clock. And I want to say that so that I don’t mislead and have them wait around. I’m sorry about him, I didn’t know the time, how long anything would take today. But I’m looking at my outline for the things that you’re lug me to ask and I won’t be done in that period of time.

Hines opines that Hunter Biden’s attorney should not have any more questions for the only witness to two of the charged crimes.

MR. HINES: I don’t know what else is relevant of this witness. We just did a tour of StarQuest.

MR. LOWELL: Why is that not relevant to find out where he was?

Having spent hours with a witness, Zoe Kestan, who introduced a slew of pictures of drug paraphernalia but who had no idea what Hunter was up to during the period of the charged crimes, Hines then whined that Lowell established the organization of the store in a way that may be inconsistent with Cleveland’s testimony. Noreika begins to relent.

MR. HINES: Well, you have taken more than thirty minutes —

THE COURT: I’m not going to cut him off from asking fair questions of the witness. So hopefully Mr. Cleveland won’t have to miss too much work tomorrow.

MR. LOWELL: I’m promise I’ll cut it down based on what you said. I’m being honest with you and you and you, it won’t be over and I know the jury will be here longer. I’m sorry, can I also say I’m trying, but at the same time, you shouldn’t criticize me for how long — you’re taking time on things you could have done shorter as well.

THE COURT: If he’s not going to finish, then why I am going to keep everybody here for a half hour?

Leo Wise insists he knows better than Abbe Lowell about how many questions Abbe Lowell has yet to ask the sole witness to two charged crimes.

MR. WISE: I think he’s going to run out. It’s hard to imagine —

THE COURT: Keep going. I have a lot of faith in Mr. Lowell that he’s not going to run out of things. I do.

MR. WISE: I have less faith.

Lowell notes that forcing him to keep the jury late is going to make them pissed at him.

MR. LOWELL: So I am suggesting, you tell me, I don’t know, this could go for another hour, I’m not saying it will, but I don’t want to invoke the wrath of the jury who has been told at the end of the day it’s 4:30. I think this fairest thing to do is for me to stop. I will go back to my outline and make it as short as possible — I can’t do that now — to save time.

Ultimately, Lowell gets the time to review his questions and streamline.

I feel for Cleveland. He dropped this second job because of health concerns in 2021, even though he was obviously very passionate about the job. Meanwhile, the gun shop totally fucked him over, making him sign a form validating a gun sale without first including the requisite information.

The statutes of limitation have expired on that sale, but thanks to Derek Hines’ obstinance about protecting gun shop owner Ron Palimere, Cleveland’s at risk of missing more than his job today.

Special Agent Erika Jensen Did Not Look, and Did Not Find, Evidence of Tampering with the Laptop

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The frothy right has gone nuts today because they took a quote out of context and believed it meant that the FBI had validated the content of the laptop.

That quote they’re using was actually a response to a colloquy between Abbe Lowell and FBI Agent Erika Jensen — who is a summary agent, and who testified she’s not a cybersecurity expert — in which she said she had not done anything to validate the laptop.

It’s not her job to validate laptops.

So she didn’t try to validate it. And having not tried, she did not find evidence of tampering.

As I noted here, it remains the case that this laptop came into evidence relying on less evidence than Lesley Wolf cited to in October 2020, just the serial number proving it had been associated with Hunter Biden’s iCloud account and an email sent to that publicly listed email.

Here’s the exchange between Lowell and Jensen.

Q. You have no reason to believe the time the FBI acquired the data from Apple, or what you just described, they changed any part of it, right?

A. Forensic examiners?

Q. Yes, the FBI, they didn’t change anything that you know of, did they?

A. No, I have a small basis of my understanding of how they work, I know they do a lot — they create images files of what would be considered the original data, so it doesn’t change the original data, but beyond that, I’m providing what I know.

Q. And the material that came into evidence that you discussed with Mr. Hines yesterday, as far as you know is the way the FBI obtained it?

A. Yes.

Q. And you indicated what you know about what they did with it, but you have no reason to believe the material that you just described yesterday, and I asked you about today, had been changed, altered, it was authentic as you understood it?

A. What I can speak to is when we obtain the data.

Q. Yes?

A. It was authentic from that point forward.

Q. And then when you provided it to us in discovery, discovery meaning you provided material to the defense, that’s the way it was sent, in the same way that you retrieved it?

A. My understanding is you received copies both of our extraction reports and of the full forensic images of the original data.

Q. I think you said, I don’t know that you identified, that as to the device, the laptop, it came into the possession of the government in December of 2019?

A. Yes.

Q. You understand that from the invoice that you showed about a repair shop that it was brought, according to the owner, in April of that year?

A. Yes. The invoice is dated in April.

Q. So can you tell what happened between the time the invoice indicates that device was brought to the shop and when the FBI acquired it six months later?

A. No.

Q. You are aware from your investigation that the person who claims to have gotten it in April indicates he made copies —

MR. HINES: Objection.

MR. LOWELL: I’ll withdraw the question.

THE COURT: Sustained.

BY MR. LOWELL: Q. Will you put up government Exhibit 40? So this is an invoice you identified yesterday, and I referred to, dated the 17th; right?

A. Yes.

Q. And you indicated that that’s one of the things you obtained from the data that was recovered and that was extracted and that you had reviewed?

A. Yes.

Q. And the date of this is the 17th; right?

A. The date of the e-mail is the 17th.

Q. But you know from your investigation that the person who sent this indicates that he got this device five days before?

A. I know from the investigation that yes, it was reported that it was April 12th.

Q. Do you have any notion of what happened in that device between April he 12th, where your investigation indicates that’s when the person acquired it, and April 17th when he sent the invoice?

A. I have some knowledge, but it’s through somebody else’s statements.

Q. So no firsthand knowledge?

A. No firsthand knowledge.

Q. Now, the last point on this. If the person acquired it in April, and the FBI says it acquired that in December, six months later, did your investigation indicate whether what was put on that machine in April was the way it was originally done by Hunter before then?

A. I’m sorry, ask that one more time.

Q. I didn’t say that right. Benchmarks. April 2019, the person says “I got the device.” Right?

A. Yes.

Q. December of 2019, the FBI acquires it?

A. Yes.

Q. What I’m asking is, did you do an analysis to determine whether on the date that this person says he got it, the data he got was in the format, content, or in any way what had originally been put there by Mr. Biden?

A. You’re asking if on the 12th the person that received it?

Q. I’m asking whatever that person got on the 12th, was the way it was originally put, do you know? Did you do an analysis? Did you find out whether any of the files had been tampered with, added to, or subtracted?

A. I did not. Right, I did not. [my emphasis]

Derek Hines then responded by getting Jensen to testify that, having not checked, she did not find whether any files had been added or tampered with.

BY MR. HINES: Q. Agent Jensen, picking up where Mr. Lowell left off, yesterday you introduced Government Exhibit 16, the laptop; correct?

A. Yes.

Q. And Mr. Lowell was asking you some questions there about whether you knew anything about tampering or something like that, for all his questions just now?

A. Yes.

Q. Have you seen any evidence whatsoever from the data you reviewed from this laptop to suggest that there was tampering?

A. No.

Q. Does the serial number on the laptop, as you discussed in your testimony yesterday, match the serial number registered with Mr. Biden’s iCloud account?

A. Yes. [my emphasis]

The exchange is useless for the purpose people want to use it.

A summary witness who is not a cybersecurity expert, who “I have a small basis of my understanding of how they work,” who was specifically directed what to look at and what not, did not “do an analysis [to] find out whether any of the files had been tampered with, added to, or subtracted?”

And having not looked, she had not, “seen any evidence whatsoever from the data you reviewed from this laptop to suggest that there was tampering.”

She didn’t look for tampering before the FBI got the laptop, and having not looked, didn’t find any tampering.

Update: Okay, this is crazypants. Remember that Jensen did less validation that Lesley Wolf did in 2020. She cited only the emailed invoice from John Paul Mac Isaac sent to Hunter Biden’s iCloud email, which is something JPMI could have sent without ever speaking to Hunter.

The invoice, as released, has no metadata.

Q. So when you looked through the materials that you just reviewed — just described, do you recall that, for example, you see an entry to an Airbnb? Did you see e-mails which reflected the rental of an Airbnb, or a rental house in that period of time, did you look at that?

A. I did not review e-mails, but beyond that —

[snip]

Q. Agent, I’m going to do better starting right now. To be clear, if — you didn’t see any e-mails?

A. I did not review e-mails, beyond the few that we discussed yesterday.

Q. Okay. I’m sorry. So you did review — where did those e-mails come from?

A. So the e-mails that I — from The View, came from the Cloud. There were e-mails from the Cloud. I did not review the entire set of e-mails.

Q. So meaning you were looking for e-mails from the Cloud that said The View?

A. No. I didn’t review the full set that would have been provided to investigators after the forensic analysis.

Q. So you got from somebody else the e-mails that 102, which you identified yesterday?

A. Yes.

That emailed invoice would have been utterly useless to validate the laptop without metadata, without reviewing his emails generally.

Bringing Receipts: Print Date: 10/22/20

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The Delaware Courthouse has started making exhibits from the Hunter Biden trial available. There are a few interesting tidbits about the paperwork from the gun shop.

The background check form shows that it was submitted at 6:36PM on October 12, 2018 and came back at 6:37PM.

We knew that already. Ronald Parlimere, the gun shop owner who tried to politicize this in 2020 only to belatedly attempt to doctor the forms in 2021 when the ATF came asking, emphasized that detail to Derek Hines and Erika Jensen when they asked him about the belatedly doctored records a few weeks ago.

Based on Palimere’s review of the documents related to the sale of the revolver, Biden made the purchase of several items including the Colt Cobra revolver at approximately 6:36 p.m. on October 12, 2018. The FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) check came back in about a minute and was a very fast response.

In the interview, Parlimere made some kind of connection between reviewing the form and media attention from people like Tucker Carlson he says happened in 2021. That seems to be one of his excuses for not properly annotating the change to the form three years after the fact (the other being, he didn’t want to call Hunter Biden to get the proper ID he hadn’t gotten years earlier).

Palimere scanned and emailed the certified 4473 to Reisch using his StarQuest email address, [email protected]. Palimere uses this email address exclusively and it is not shared by other StarQuest employees. The form was then filed away. Palimere did not handle the form again for three years and until he was requested to turn it over to ATF SA Veronica Hnat on September 23, 2021.

In 2021, Palimere had significant media attention and he had news crews, Tucker Carlson, the ATF and the FBI contacting him. He received numerous contacts from media including to his email address and on his phone.

Palimere was contacted by Hnat who said she wanted to come by to take custody of the Form 4473. Palimere ultimately went to the ATF building in Wilmington, Delaware, and turned over the annotated 4473. Palimere received a receipt for property from the ATF. Hnat allowed Palimere to make a copy of the annotated 4473 for his records.

[snip]

At the time it was a big scandal and there was intense attention on the incident. It was on prime time on every news channel and USSS was saying they never went into StarQuest. Palimere and the other employees heard that Mac Isaac of the computer store was in protective custody. They were all scared to death. Palimere felt it was necessary to annotate the Form 4473 because he felt they were going to get in trouble just for going up against Biden.

Anyway, what I find interesting about the timing of the background check is that it took another 16 minutes to ring up the purchase, as indicated by the red rectangle on the receipt.

I’m not sure long it should take after all the approvals are done. I do know that Parlimere told Hines and Jensen he wanted to get Hunter out of the store as quickly as possible.

In the case of Biden’s sale, Gordon Cleveland, was the salesman. Palimere was sitting at his desk in the back and Cleveland said something to the effect of, “Hey, Hunter Biden’s here. He wants to use his passport.” Palimere was familiar with Biden’s father’s not being a gun supporter so Palimere thought it would be bad for Palimere’s business to have Hunter Biden seen in his store. Palimere wanted to get the sale completed and get Biden out of the store, so Palimere said yes to using the passport as identification. Palimere never interacted with Biden.

Should it have taken 16 more minutes?

I have no idea. I look forward to Gordon Cleveland’s testimony. He doesn’t have a proffer immunizing him, after all.

According to Erika Jensen’s testimony yesterday, she herself subpoenaed this exhibit.

BY MR. HINES: Q. So looking at the background check paperwork, what does this document appear to show, could you explain it?

A. This is a response for a check of a subject’s background in order to see if they qualify to purchase a firearm.

Q. And when you look at the status on the bottom, what is the status for whether or not Mr. Biden passed the background check?

A. The status response is proceed.

Q. And is that after — that was in the production after the Form 4473; correct?

A. Yes.

Q. Now, turning to page, government’s Exhibit 13(a), page 1, government’s Exhibit 13(a), page 1, is that a receipt — take it down. Is that a receipt that you received from StarQuest?

A. This is a receipt I received in response to the subpoena to StarQuest.

Given the Bates stamp, it would have been included in the production certified by StarQuest on April 24, 2024.

After admitting the exhibit, which was subpoenaed last fall, Derek Hines walked Agent Jensen through the receipt, showing each of the items Hunter Biden bought back on October 12, 2018.

MR. HINES: Move for the admission of 13(a).

MR. LOWELL: No objection.

THE COURT: Thank you. It’s admitted. (Exhibit No. 13(a) was admitted into evidence.)

BY MR. HINES: Q. If we zoom in on the top. Can you please list what the items are that are listed on this receipt?

A. The first item was an Item Number 18654, was a Colt Cobra 38 Special, Talo Classic, with a serial number RA551363.

Then cuing her by asking not what the date was but whether it was the date that Hunter had withdrawn $500 from an ATM, she noted that the date of the receipt itself is October 12, 2018.

Q. This was the day $500 was withdrawn from the ATM?

A. This was on October 12, 2018.

Q. Looking at the bottom, does it say Robert Biden?

A. Yes.

Q. Did you redact the address that’s listed there?

A. Yes.

Hines made two errors. Hunter didn’t withdraw the money from an ATM. He went to a teller, which was rare for Hunter Biden. And it was $5,000, not $500. We know that, in part, because prosecutors want to compare his signature on the withdrawal form with the signature on the gun purchase form.

Ah well. In the grand scheme of the errors Derek Hines has made, I consider this a fairly minor one.

Anyway, until after we get the Cleveland testimony — to learn why it took another 16 minutes to complete the sale — I’ll hold off on my curiosity about why it took 16 minutes to complete the sale.

In the meantime, though, I want to consider what the other date on the receipt means.

October 22, 2020.

You see, according to Abbe Lowell, in October 2020, Palimere and some buddies had “a plan to send [Hunter’s gun purchase form] to others” to make sure “the gun sale issue and the form [would be] exposed during the Presidential campaign.” But first they “had to get their stories straight.”

It also reveals a now-exposed attempt by the gun store to fabricate a false narrative about the gun sale. Palimere said the addition of the seller transaction serial number (“5,653”) may have been added on October 26, 2018. (TAB 4, Palimere FD-302 at 4). He said the vehicle registration reference was added in 2021. Yet, the government provided WhatsApp communications from October 2020 and February 2021 between Palimere, friends of his, and then-Delaware state trooper Vincent Clemons3 (see TABs 6 – 6C), all of which refer to the form, a plan to send it to others, needing to get their stories straight about what occurred in 2020, and wanting the gun sale issue and the form exposed during the Presidential campaign.

3 Not to be lost is the fact that Clemons was the Delaware State Police officer who first arrived at Janssens’ grocery store on October 23, 2018 when Hallie Biden threw a bag containing the handgun into a trash can in front of the store. It was Clemons who took statements about the handgun from both Hallie and Hunter Biden and was part of filling out an official police report on the issue. Two years later, he is in the communications with Palimere about the Form 4473, one of which states: “Yep your side is simple – Hunter bought a gun from you, he filled out the proper forms and the Feds approved him for a purchase.” (emphasis added). Palimere later responded, “I’ll keep it short and sweet as well: Hunter bought a gun. The police visited me asking for verification of the purchase and that’s all I can recall from that day. It was over 2 years ago.” (TAB 6B, 10/26/20 Palimere-Clemons Texts at 4, 6.) The reference to filling out the “proper forms” is not lost on defense counsel given what transpired thereafter. And, despite the importance of Clemons (e.g., the person who actually took the statements), the Special Counsel is foregoing him as a witness to call two other Delaware officers instead.

Derek Hines says that’s not right, and successfully pitched all this a claim of political bias.

These selected portions3 of communications by Palimere to two friends and also to Sgt. Clemons – were made two years after the events in question when defendant’s father was a political candidate. The defendant inaccurately summarizes them as referring “to the form, a plan to send it to others, needing to get their stories straight about what occurred in 2020, and wanting the gun sale issue and the form exposed during the Presidential campaign.” Supp. Resp. p. 8 and n. 3. Nevertheless, he clearly wishes to confuse the jury by introducing these spliced, non-relevant communications to incite prejudice and emotion among the jury to distract from the elements of the crimes that were complete years before.

And because she fell for one of Derek Hines’ false claims again, Judge Noreika prohibited any of these communications from 2020 from coming in as evidence.

3. Questioning, testimony, evidence or argument, including but not limited to, the additional exhibits designated by the Defendant as tabs “6-6C” to his supplemental submission regarding any witnesses’ political bias are excluded from introduction or admission at trial because such questioning, testimony, evidence or argument is not relevant, is unduly prejudicial and invites nullification.3

2 The government has stated that it intends to call Gordon Cleveland, a gun shop employee, who will testify that he watched Defendant fill out Section A of the Certified Form and that Defendant checked “no” to question 11e about being an unlawful user or addict. Both the Certified Form and the 2021 Form have the same check mark (“X”) responding “no” to question 11e. The addition of “DE VEHICLE REGISTRATION” to a different section of the 2021 Form after the Defendant filled it out does not have “any tendency to make” those two facts, which are “fact[s] of consequence in determining” the charges – that he filled it out and that he said he wasn’t an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance – more or less probable. F.R.E. 401. The Court also agrees with the government that Defendant’s conspiratorial theory about “doctored” forms and currying favor with the government is unsupported rhetoric, which would be prejudicial and confusing to the jury.

Through his considerable power of prosecutorial dickishness, Derek Hines got Judge Maryellen Noreika to exclude these 2020 communications from evidence.

And then he submitted one himself.

Update: In leading gun salesman Gordon Cleveland in the sale yesterday, Derek Hines corrected himself to say that this was a reprint of the receipt.

Q. I’m showing you Exhibit 13(a). Is this the receipt, a reprint of the receipt that rang out the sale for Mr. Biden that day?

A. Yes, it is.

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