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Parallel Poisons: Derek Hines’ (Mis)Representations about His Post-Indictment Investigation

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As I noted in this post, I confirmed that a warrant that AUSA Derek Hines says he relied on to search Hunter Biden’s iCloud content for evidence of firearms violations was not obtained until December 4, 2023, 81 days after Hines obtained an indictment charging Hunter for those violations.

As I also explained, there’s no reason to doubt that that warrant is lawful. I imagine the affidavit for it simply quotes a bunch of Hunter Biden’s public comments about his addiction to establish probable cause. While it is dickish for a prosecutor to seek evidence that has been readily available for years between charging and trial, so long as he’s not relying on the grand jury that was exclusively focused on investigating that crime, it would be within the bounds of normal dickish prosecutorial behavior.

Where it starts to be a problem is in the way it undermines the argument at hand. In the same filing where he revealed that warrant, for example, Hines leant heavily on representations Chris Clark made, in a letter sent in October 2022, about a call he had in March 2022 (Hines only includes three pages of a 27-page letter; Politico describes the rest to be an extensive description of the political pressure to charge the gun charges), to claim that prosecutors were always going to charge Hunter for gun crimes, even before Jim Jordan demanded those charges.

During the course of discussions between counsel for the defendant and counsel for the government, in a letter dated October 31, 2022, from Mr. Biden’s prior counsel to government counsel, the defense wrote:

Since December 2020, nearly all of our meetings, phone calls, and correspondence with your Office have related to the Government’s investigation of Mr. Biden for possible tax offenses. It was not until a phone call in March 2022—over a year into our cooperative dialogue—that your Office disclosed a potential investigation of Mr. Biden for possible firearms offenses (the “Firearm Investigation”). (footnote)

Exhibit 1 (redacted and includes only relevant pages).

The footnote in the letter stated, “Your Office informed us that the implic ated Title 18 provisions are Sections 922(g)(3), 922(a)(6), and 924(a)(1)(A).” Id. (emphasis added). The defense later released their letter to selected media outlets, 7 but the defendant did not include it in his materials filed with the Court in support of his motion to enforce the diversion agreement. The letter the defense sent in October 2022 shows that the defense was aware that the government was considering all of the charges later returned in the indictment, see Section I.G., as of March 2022. This directly refutes that the charges returned by the grand jury were the product of various statements by out-of-office politicians in 2023, as the defendant claims. [emphasis original]

In October 2022, prosecutors could still and likely were relying on content available on the laptop (including, per Daily Mail, a voice mail from Joe Biden on October 15, 2018 telling Hunter to get help). But in November 2022, John Paul Mac Isaac published a book claiming, among other things, that the FBI was attempting to access the laptop on December 9, 2019, four days before the warrant David Weiss is relying on here, meaning any reliance on the laptop would pose significant problems at trial (even before you consider some forensic problems I’m still trying to nail down).

Here’s the passage from JPMI’s book — it becomes important below:

Agent Wilson eventually shook my hand, saying, “Let us know if anyone comes looking for it. Call us immediately.” “What should I tell them?” I asked, hoping the conversation would never arise.

“Tell them you keep abandoned equipment offsite, like a warehouse location,” Agent DeMeo answered, taking over. “Tell them it will take a day for you to check and they should call back the next day. Then immediately text me at my cell number. From now on, only communicate through my cell number. Not Agent Wilson, just me. We need to avoid communicating through, ah, normal channels. I’m sure you can understand. Text me and we will get the equipment back to you and deal with the situation.”

[snip]

I went home and called my father. I was relaying the facts when an incoming call notification showed up: Agent DeMeo.

“I’ll have to call you back. I have one of the agents calling in,” I told my father before switching calls.

“Hello, this is John Paul,” I said.

“Hi, my name is Matt,” said a voice I didn’t recognize. “I work with Agent DeMeo and Agent Wilson. Do you have a second? I have some questions about accessing the laptop.”

Confused, I responded, “Sure, what’s going on?”

“Did the laptop come with any cables or a charger? How can I connect the drive to a PC? When I plug it in, it wants to format the drive,” Matt said.

“PCs can’t natively read Mac-formatted disks. You will only be able to access the drive from another Mac.”

This is fairly common knowledge among most computer users, and I was surprised that any kind of tech person wouldn’t know it.

“Sadly, Hunter never left the charger or any other cables,” I went on. “I have a charger and everything you need back at the shop. You guys are welcome to it.”

I was feeling really uncomfortable. This Matt guy definitely didn’t seem to have the training or resources to be performing a forensic evaluation of the laptop. Hadn’t the whole reason for taking the laptop been to get it to a lab for proper evaluation and dissemination?

“Tell him we’re OK and we won’t need to go back to his shop,” Agent DeMeo said in the background. “We’ll call you back if we need to,” Matt said before hanging up.

[snip]

“Hi, it’s Matt again. So, we have a power supply and a USB-C cable, but when we boot up, I can’t get the mouse or keyboard to work.”

I couldn’t believe it—they were trying to boot the machine!

“The keyboard and trackpad were disconnected due to liquid damage. If you have a USB-C–to–USB-A adaptor, you should be able to use any USB keyboard or mouse,” I said. He related this to Agent DeMeo and quickly hung up.

Matt called yet again about an hour later.

“So this thing won’t stay on when it’s unplugged. Does the battery work?”

I explained that he needed to plug in the laptop and that once it turned on, the battery would start charging. I could sense his stress and his embarrassment at having to call repeatedly for help. [my emphasis]

So this warrant was likely just parallel construction, an effort to make evidence already in hand admissible at trial. That’s also considered perfectly legal, just another of the dickish prosecutorial tactics considered normal.

But Derek Hines can’t very well tell Judge Maryellen Noreika that the guy who gave the FBI the laptop would testify, if called as a witness, that the FBI was, “trying to boot the machine!” before obtaining a warrant for it. Or at least before obtaining this warrant, the December 13, 2019 warrant that Hines claims to be relying on.

So instead, Hines told her that they first obtained a warrant to search for content on December 4, 2023, 81 days after obtaining an indictment.

The process of parallel constructing that content, if that’s what happened, now helps Abbe Lowell make the case that prosecutors weren’t really considering charging the gun crimes until Jim Jordan demanded they do so, because Hines has implied to Judge Noreika that they didn’t obtain a warrant to search for evidence of that crime until … after they indicted.

Things get worse from there. According to an unrebutted claim Lowell made in his December 11 motion for discovery, ten days before Lowell filed that motion, Hines responded to Lowell’s inquiry about whether he should expect, “any additional productions in the near-term,” by stating he would, “let the discovery stand for itself.”

During a meet and confer phone call on December 1, 2023, Mr. Biden’s counsel even asked Messrs. Wise and Hines for a status update of the prosecution’s discovery, and specifically whether the government intended to make any additional productions in the near-term or respond to our various discovery request letters, to which Mr. Hines responded that the government would “let the discovery stand for itself.”

Hines told Lowell, ten days before Lowell’s motions were due, that the discovery spoke for itself.

And then, three days later, he went and got a new warrant for content he wants to use at trial against Hunter Biden.

Note that, in the passage that discloses these warrants, Hines doesn’t say that he provided Lowell the warrant before his motions deadline? He only claims to have given Lowell the content, “in advance of the deadline to file motions.”

In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant’s Apple iCloud account. 2 In response to that warrant, in September 2019, Apple produced backups of data from various of the defendant’s electronic devices that he had backed up to his iCloud account. 3 Investigators also later came into possession of the defendant’s Apple MacBook Pro, which he had left at a computer store. A search warrant was also obtained for his laptop and the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple. 4 Law enforcement also later obtained a search warrant to search the defendant’s electronic evidence for evidence of federal firearms violations and to seize such data. 5

2 District of Delaware Case No. 19-234M and a follow up search warrant, District of Delaware Case Number 20-165M.

3 The electronic evidence referenced in this section was produced to the defendant in discovery in advance of the deadline to file motions.

4 District of Delaware Case No. 19-309M

5 District of Delaware Case No. 23-507M. [my emphasis]

You need to cross-reference this passage with Hines’ response to Lowell’s discovery request to discover that Hines doesn’t claim to have given Lowell anything after obtaining the December iCloud warrant until January 9, almost a month after the motions deadline.

On October 8, 2023, the defendant made a request for discovery under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 16.

On October 12, 2023, the government provided to the defendant a production of materials consisting of over 350 pages of documents as well as additional electronic evidence from the defendant’s Apple iCloud account and a copy of data from the defendant’s laptop. This production included search warrants related to evidence the government may use in its case-in-chief in the gun case, statements of the defendant including his admissions that he was addicted to crack cocaine and possessed a firearm in 2018, and law enforcement reports related to the gun investigation.

On November 1, 2023, the government provided a production of materials to the defendant that was over 700,000 pages and largely consisted of documents obtained during an investigation into whether the defendant timely filed and paid his taxes and committed tax evasion. These documents included information of the defendant’s income and payments to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs in 2018, the same year in which the defendant possessed the firearm while addicted to controlled substances.

On December 7, 2023, a grand jury in the Central District of California returned an indictment (hereafter the “tax indictment”) charging the defendant with the following tax offenses:

[snip]

In advance of his initial appearance on the tax indictment, the government made a production of materials to the defendant on January 9, 2024, which included over 500,000 pages of documents and consisted of additional information related to the tax investigation. [my emphasis]

That is, in his selective and vindictive response, Hines has suggested to Judge Noreika that Lowell had the opportunity to suppress content. But in his discovery response, Hines seems to suggest that he didn’t provide Lowell the warrant that he would need to suppress until after the motions deadline passed, in language that implies the January 9 discovery pertained exclusively to the tax case, and not the gun case.

Before I get into where Hines may really have created a problem for himself, let’s consider how it is possible that Hines could have provided Lowell with “the electronic evidence referenced in this section” before he had obtained a warrant to find it.

See the language I’ve turned red? On October 12, Hines gave Lowell,

  • Additional electronic evidence from the defendant’s Apple iCloud account
  • A copy of data from the defendant’s laptop

The texts he quotes in the filing may well be in both of those, the iCloud account and the laptop. They definitely were on the laptop; that’s where the Daily Mail got them.

It’s the iCloud content where things get interesting (but not yet to where Hines really created a problem for himself — not yet). When the FBI gets a warrant, they get everything, and then can search for the stuff that fits within their scope. So in either 2019 or — more likely — 2020, they got everything in Hunter’s iCloud from 2018. Often, prosecutors will give defendants both a complete and a scoped version of evidence, basically, “here’s everything Apple had on you, and here’s the stuff that complied with our warrant.”  So it could just be that Hines provided Lowell with Hunter’s iCloud and that’s the basis for saying that Lowell had everything before the motions deadline.

But Hines implies that the iCloud content he turned over on October 12 was scoped, pertinent to the gun crime.

If that’s right, it means Hines had a different warrant than the December 4, 2023 one authorizing the search of content for gun crimes. It’s possibly the one, 20-165M, he describes in a footnote but doesn’t explain in the text, the one that would have come after relying on the laptop for seven months without doing much due diligence on it. If so, we’ll learn that when the warrant actually gets unsealed on Monday; something to look forward to! Or, it’s possible there’s one from 2021 or 2022 that Hines doesn’t want to talk about, not to us and not to Judge Noreika.

It’s like that it’s not so much that prosecutors hadn’t already gotten the evidence to charge Hunter with gun crimes, it’s that they had to get a new warrant to make it admissible at trial without giving Lowell cause to subpoena JPMI to describe how the FBI told him they were booting up Hunter Biden’s laptop on December 9, 2019, before they got a warrant.

Or at least before they got this warrant.

If Judge Noreika were to ask about the confusion, Hines might just explain that they got a warrant relying on the laptop obtained in good faith, but have since gotten a new warrant to ensure it’s all kosher. Mind you, along the way, he might have to explain that something Abbe Lowell said on that phone call on December 1 — possibly following up on the discovery request he made on October 8 for any record of communications with John Paul Mac Isaac — led him to run out and get a new warrant that didn’t rely on the laptop.

Any documents and/or information reflecting communications (whether oral or in writing) between anyone in your Office or any member of the investigative team or their supervisors (including FBI and IRS agents) with John Paul Mac Isaac or any member of his family.

Who knows: Maybe Hines discovered, for the first time, that there were three calls made from Agent DeMeo’s phone to JPMI on December 9, 2019, a phone used, according to JPMI’s description of what DeMeo told him because, “We need to avoid communicating through, ah, normal channels.” Maybe Hines discovered corroboration for JPMI’s claim that the FBI was booting up Hunter Biden’s laptop four days before obtaining a warrant. Or at least before obtaining the warrant dated December 13, 2019.

Believe it or not, if they had a warrant — say, one obtained by Bill Barr’s office in advance of the time his Chief of Staff sent him a text on December 14 saying, “Laptop on way to you” — all this still might fly. There is a great deal of dickishness that prosecutors routinely get away with.

Where prosecutors get in trouble is not collecting evidence after indicting and not in parallel constructing evidence and not in relying on dodgy warrants so long as they were obtained in good faith — prosecutors get away with that kind of dickishness all the time!

Where prosecutors get in trouble is in misleading judges. And I have to believe that Judge Noreika might not look too kindly on Hines’ claim, in his discovery filing, that suggested he turned over the warrants “related to evidence the government may use in its case-in-chief in the gun case” on October 12, as if he turned over all the warrants relating to the gun case.

This production included search warrants related to evidence the government may use in its case-in-chief in the gun case,

He obviously couldn’t have turned over all the warrants relating to the gun case on October 12, because he hadn’t obtained the one he claims he is relying on, not for another 53 days yet!

Derek Hines might get away with obtaining evidence after the indictment and parallel construction and good faith reliance on a warrant that relied on the laptop. That’s all normal prosecutorial dickishness. But if Judge Noreika feels like he implied he turned over all the warrants in one filing even while, in another, he was hiding the fact that he didn’t turn over the warrant he is actually relying on until well after the motions deadline, then Hines might get into hot water.

You can get away with a great deal of prosecutorial dickishness, but you can’t mislead a judge.

Mind you, it may not matter. Whatever is going on, by obtaining a warrant 81 days after indicting Hunter Biden, Hines has created the appearance that he didn’t obtain his best evidence until after rushing an indictment that Jim Jordan demanded, making it more likely that this would be that almost unheard of example where a judge rules there’s reason to question the prosecutors’ decisions.

At the very least, Judge Noreika might just grant Abbe Lowell discovery to try to figure out why Derek Hines got a warrant 81 days after the indictment.

Update: Corrected Judge Noreika’s first name.

Confirmed: David Weiss Only Got a Gun Crime iCloud Warrant 81 Days after Indicting Hunter Biden

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As I laid out here and here, David Weiss’ response to Hunter Biden’s motion to dismiss on selective and vindictive prosecution grounds seemed to rely on a warrant that post-dated the September 14, 2023 indictment charging Hunter with three gun crimes.

Here’s the language in question.

In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant’s Apple iCloud account. 2 In response to that warrant, in September 2019, Apple produced backups of data from various of the defendant’s electronic devices that he had backed up to his iCloud account. 3 Investigators also later came into possession of the defendant’s Apple MacBook Pro, which he had left at a computer store. A search warrant was also obtained for his laptop and the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple. 4 Law enforcement also later obtained a search warrant to search the defendant’s electronic evidence for evidence of federal firearms violations and to seize such data. 5

2 District of Delaware Case No. 19-234M and a follow up search warrant, District of Delaware Case Number 20-165M.

3 The electronic evidence referenced in this section was produced to the defendant in discovery in advance of the deadline to file motions.

4 District of Delaware Case No. 19-309M

5 District of Delaware Case No. 23-507M. [my emphasis]

I asked his spox whether that could possibly be true, but he declined to comment.

So I wrote a letter to Judge Maryellen Noreika seeking to unseal the dockets as judicial records, which would reveal the date.

Judge Noreika ordered the two sides to weigh in.

ORAL ORDER re 73 Letter: IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that, on or before close of business on January 26, 2024, the parties shall provide the Court with their respective positions on the request to unseal the dockets and warrants referenced in the letter 73 . ORDERED by Judge Maryellen Noreika on 1/25/2024. (mdb) (Entered: 01/25/2024)

Both sides have now responded (Abbe Lowell, Weiss), stating they do not oppose the request, so the dockets and some information about warrant scope should soon be unsealed.

But Weiss’ letter confirmed my suspicions:

That last warrant, 23-507M, is the only one he described to authorize searches for gun crimes. He didn’t obtain that warrant until December 4 of last year.

David Weiss has been investigating Hunter Biden for going on six years; he indicted the gun crimes just days before the statute of limitations expired on them.

And in all that time, Weiss had (at least per his description) never obtained a warrant to search the iCloud content he first started getting in August 2019 until December 4, 2023, 81 days after he indicted.

To be very clear: there’s absolutely no reason to believe that the December 4 warrant in any way failed to show probable cause (though the laptop may have tainted the July 10, 2020 warrant for other crimes).

Rather, this totally undermines David Weiss’ arguments about why he reneged on his diversion agreement.

In his filing, he claimed he had been considering charging those crimes for some time before he reneged on the diversion agreement. But if that were true — if it were remotely true he was seriously considering charging the gun crimes before Jim Jordan demanded he do so — then he would have obtained this warrant years before, probably in the 2020 warrant or at the very least after Hunter’s book was published in April 2021.

Update: Corrected Judge Noreika’s first name.

“What it gets at is just facts:” MAGAts Learn to Love Long-Delayed Interview Reports

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I spent much of my day reading the transcript from Hunter Biden attorney Kevin Morris’ deposition by the House. (xitter thread here)

It was a predictable shit show.

And some details — such as Morris’ disclosure that the only reason he contributed $11,000 on Hunter’s behalf pertaining to a Porsche in 2020 was to pay it off to the point that he could sell it — confirm that David Weiss was spinning Hunter’s expenses on the tax indictment to put them in the worst possible light.

But there’s a particular meltdown that deserves further attention. One of the GOP staffers was grilling Morris about the references to him recorded in a Joseph Ziegler interview report from a September 29, 2022 interview of James Biden, which would have been the last substantive interview of the investigation before David Weiss reopened it last year.

These bullet points are Ziegler’s representation of what James Biden had to say about Morris; they were asking him about a March 2020 communication from a period when Morris was putting together a plan to get Hunter’s life back on track, including by filing his tax returns. If Ziegler’s representation is accurate, the President’s brother is not terrifically enamored of Hunter’s benefactor.

Text Dated March 2020:

a. Kevin Morris (“Morris”) was an attorney for SouthPark and the Book of Mormon. Morris is a very wealthy guy. Morris had befriended RHB. James B didn’t know why or when this occurred.

b. James B was asked by DOJ-Tax attorney Daly what “World Class of People” referred to? James B thought that this could be attorneys and could mean anything. Morris has a huge ego in being a successful entertainment attorney. RHB wasn’t interfacing with anyone during this time except for Morris and one other guy who flipped houses named George.

c. Morris was helping RHB a lot, but James B didn’t know why. James B thought that this might have been because of his ego. RHB asked James B to thank Morris because Morris requested a thank you. James B had no understanding of what the team of people means and has no knowledge of what Morris had done for RHB. James B was not sure if there was a loan between Morris and RHB. James B thought that the money was significant enough that RHB asked his uncle to say something to Morris and thank him. James B didn’t recall a specific discussion only to say thank you “on behalf of the family”.

d. James B recalled that when RHB was being vilified by the media, Morris had sent a film crew to Bulgaria. Morris was there with his film crew monitoring a documentary trying to defame RHB.

e. James B only met Morris 3-4 times. Morris wanted James B to come work for him and James B told Morris that he was not interested. James B met Morris at his home. Morris also came to RHB’s house for a picnic in which James B attended.

f. James B recalled Morris making a comment that if RHB’s attorneys weren’t going to listen to him, then he wanted nothing to do with them.

g. James B stated that Morris thought he was very knowledgeable “politically,” but James B thought otherwise.

h. James B was not aware if Morris asked RHB for anything else other than a thank you. RHB was very closed lip about Morris. [my emphasis]

So a Republican staffer takes this passage and then asks Morris what James Biden meant when he said that he, Morris, was not very knowledgable politically, an observation there’s no reason to believe Morris had heard directly.

Mr [redacted]. If you go to 51(g), just a little bit lower, it says, “James Biden recalled Morris making a comment” — or excuse me.

Mr. Sullivan. (f), you mean?

Mr. (g): “James B stated that Morris thought he was very knowledgeable ‘politically,’ but James B thought otherwise.” Do you know why James Biden would say that you thought you were politically savvy?

Morris balks. Hours into this deposition, he doesn’t simply point out he would have no way of knowing. Based on what he knows about James Biden, he doubts the representation is accurate. He, a Hollywood lawyer, cites Law and Order.

Mr. Morris. I don’t believe that he said it.

Look, counsel, this is not a transcript. These are the notes of a law enforcement official, you know, trying to, you know, trying to get a case going. All you have to do is watch one episode of “Law & Order” to know that that’s not often — it’s not always accurate.

GOP staffer then makes of Morris’ comment something it isn’t.

Mr. [redacted] So you’re saying you never had any political conversations with James Biden?

Mr. Morris. No, I don’t remember any political conversations with Jim.

A Dem staffer, perhaps seeing this about to go off the rails, notes that this is not a contemporary record of the interview.

Mr. [redacted, seemingly a Dem staffer] And can we just establish for the record that this is a memorandum of interview for an interview that took place September 29th, 2022. And as is noted on the last page, Agent Ziegler notes in it, “I prepared this memorandum on over the period October 10th through November 2nd, 2022, after refreshing my memory –“

Which leads things to go after the rails. For at least the second time in the deposition, a Republican staffer defends Joseph Ziegler’s honor, as if he hadn’t already been caught in misrepresentations of these events.

Mr. [redacted] Are you disputing the accuracy of the — of this memo?

Mr. [redacted] “– from notes made during and immediately after the interview with James Biden.”

The Reporter asks people to stop interrupting each other.

The Reporter. You have to repeat. I had two people talking at the same time.

Mr. [redacted] I’m just noting that at the end it says, “I prepared this memorandum on over the period October 10th through November 2nd, 2022, after refreshing my memory with notes made during and immediately after the interview with James Biden.”

I’m — this is just — I’m just reading from the —

[1:39 p.m.]

Mr. [redacted] It’s in the — we’ve entered it into the record. So the notes were made — if we’re going to — we’re going to pause if you want to maybe ask questions.

Ms. [redacted] We can pause.

A seeming Republican argues that since this is already in the record it must be taken as Gospel.

 Mr. [redacted] There were notes that were taken with this. So I don’t know what the point of that was since it’s already in the record.

Ms. [redacted] I think the point is that this is not a contemporaneous memorandum.

Another Democratic staffer notes this is not a contemporaneous record.

That this was actually written down several days, actually a couple weeks after the interview. And it says on the face of it that Mr. Ziegler had to refresh his memory from  notes. So I think, you know, it is — it’s as valuable as the paper it’s written on, but it says on its face that it’s not contemporaneous. I think that’s the point we’re making.

Mr. [redacted] And I’m just making that point in the interactions or comments that James Biden said X, and I just want to be clear that what this document says about what it is and what it is not.

A likely Republican says that because ten people attended the interview, all must have vouched for the accuracy of the memo.

Mr. [redacted] There’s also 10 people present here. And, presumably, Mr. Ziegler, when he prepared this, he circulated, at least to the internal folks, to make sure that he had it accurate, right?

Kevin Morris is not having it. He notes only one other person, Christine Puglisi, signed it.

Mr. Morris. No, we don’t know that. I’m not presuming what Mr. Ziegler said.

I mean, it is signed by Mr. Ziegler and by another special agent. And I am just reading the caveat that’s noted above his own signature. I’m not speculating —

Someone complains that they’ve gone off the rails.

Mr. [redacted] We’re getting a little bit —

The court reporter begs, again, for people to stop talking over each other.

The Reporter. Can we speak one at a time, please.

Morris’ attorney points out what Morris might have: The House shouldn’t be pushing on this in any case, because Morris has no personal knowledge of the interview.

Mr. Sullivan [Morris attorney]. Sorry. For me as the counsel for the witness, I am just saying, the questions are being asked about, based on this memo, that Mr. Morris has no personal knowledge of anything that was actually said. If this is true, we just don’t know. We don’t have any personal knowledge of whether this is.

Mr. [redacted] Fair enough.

Mr. Sullivan. That is my main concern — questions about that —

The Republicans will not be deterred.

Mr. [redacted] Jim Biden mentions —

The court reporter tries, again, to get people to stop talking over each other.

Mr. Reporter. One at a time, please.

The Republicans will not be deterred.

Mr. [redacted] Jim Biden mentions Mr. Morris. Here we’re simply asking questions to the extent you can answer it. Or if you disagree with it, you can tell us what you can tell us, and that’s where we’ll be.

Morris repeats that this transcript doesn’t sound like Jim Biden, but also notes that even if he did, it doesn’t get Republicans to where they want to get.

Mr. Morris. And counsel what I’m saying is, I do question the validity of this. I do question a lot of it. Some of it sounds lake stuff Jim would never say. But, in any event, I don’t believe — you know, were it all true, I don’t know where this gets you. Like if, you know — and I could be speculating about what Jimmy said in front of investigators, you know, written down by the memo and not on a transcript.

In response to which, a Republican asserts that this transcript, which Morris contests, relaying claims to which Morris has no personal knowledge, “gets at is just facts.”

Mr. [redacted] What it gets at is just facts. I mean, we’re just trying to ask you questions as fast as we can.

It’s nice to know these committees are just as much of a shit show behind closed doors as are the hearings hosted by James Comer.

But the dispute is worth closer look. The point the Democrats are making is that this interview of James Biden — the last interview of this investigation — was not written up for 34 days. The interview was held on September 29, 2022. Ziegler described that, starting 11 days after the interview, he wrote it up over a period of 23 days, from October 10 to November 2.

I prepared this memorandum on over the period October 10th through November 2nd, 2022, after refreshing my memory from notes made during and immediately after the interview with James Biden. [my emphasis]

Not only that, but Ziegler corrected himself: he didn’t write the memo on a particular day, he wrote it over a more than three week period just before the 2022 midterms.

Remember: It is an article of faith that there must have been political interference because it took 22 days to write up an interview report of Mike Flynn’s January 24, 2017 interview, which was finalized on February 15, 2017. This conspiracy theory frothed Republicans up but good for — I kid you not — 675 days until, after a series of backflips to invent some reason to throw out the Flynn prosecution, Bill Barr’s DOJ admitted the conspiracy theory was based on fluff. There was no original 302, they admitted after Sidney Powell spent years leading MAGAts to believe there was.

The delay in finalizing Flynn’s 302, which is actually far too routine, was a core piece of “proof” in the conspiracy theories that Flynn was wrongfully prosecuted.

And here, an interview report of the President’s brother took 12 days longer to complete than Flynn’s (which is still not that long compared to far too many interview reports). Worse still, during that entire period, Ziegler’s boss and close ally on this case, Gary Shapley, was busy inventing a reason to blow up the case. Ziegler didn’t even begin to write up this interview until after the October 6 leak and the October 7 meeting that has since roiled the case.

Honestly, Morris should have started where he ultimately ended up: noting that even if the interview report recorded James Biden accurately, it didn’t help Republicans’ conspiracy theories.

But by raising questions about whether Ziegler, at a time when he and Shapley were inventing conspiracy theories about this case, accurately recorded the President’s brother, he invited Republicans to demonstrate just how little they really care about delayed interview reports.

Abbe Lowell’s Eight Chessboards

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The developments in two Hunter Biden lawsuits — his Privacy Act claim against the IRS and his hacking claim against Garrett Ziegler — made me think about how many moving parts Abbe Lowell is juggling, and the degree to which he may be staging them all to work together.

First, on January 22, Lowell successfully requested to move the hearing for Garrett Ziegler’s motion to dismiss Hunter’s hacking lawsuit to coincide with Rudy’s (in which Robert Costello is the one defendant, on account of Rudy’s bankruptcy).

IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that the hearing on Defendants’ Motion to Dismiss Pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(1), 12(b)(2), 12(b)(3), and Cal. Civ. Proc. Code Section 425.16 is continued from February 22, 2024, at 10:00 a.m. to March 21, 2024, at 10:00 a.m.

I think this will have the result of delaying Lowell’s disclosure of his theory of venue in California and of hacking, so (for example) Costello — the far better lawyered of the two defendants — now won’t have time to respond to what Lowell unveils against Ziegler. It will likewise delay this reveal until after Hunter testifies in a deposition before Congress.

Meanwhile, on January 16, DOJ filed a motion to dismiss just part of Hunter’s IRS lawsuit based on all the documents released public via Joseph Ziegler and Gary Shapley. Hunter’s lawsuit alleged two counts:

  1. Grossly negligent unauthorized disclosure on behalf of both the IRS agents and their attorneys
  2. Privacy Act violation, based on IRS’ inadequate protections against such disclosures

DOJ moved to dismiss the part of count 1 that included the IRS agents’ lawyers but not the IRS agents themselves, and moved to dismiss the Privacy Act claim for several reasons, two technical, but also a third that Hunter did not adequately allege that IRS had not taken proper safeguards against the disclosures. Yesterday, both sides in that lawsuit asked to delay Hunter’s response to February 20, giving this explanation.

Rule 6(b)(1)(A) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure permits the Court to extend the time for answering, moving, or otherwise responding to the complaint for good cause shown. Good cause exists to extend Mr. Biden’s deadline to respond to the partial motion to dismiss to February 20, 2024. Mr. Biden’s counsel is in the process of reviewing the Defendants’ partial motion to dismiss and assessing the appropriate response to the motion. In addition, Mr. Biden’s counsel has a number of filing deadlines in his two criminal cases and several of his pending civil cases in the next few weeks.

Notably, DOJ did not move to dismiss the claim that Ziegler and Shapley were grossly negligent in their treatment of Hunter’s tax information. At the very least, that means Hunter can get discovery on their actions, and it likely means the same DOJ that is prosecuting Hunter Biden for tax crimes agrees that it is plausible that the two agents who were primary investigators for years treated his tax information improperly.

Consider the timing of this extension, though — the claimed basis for it. In the criminal suits, Lowell has to reply to his motions to dismiss in the Delaware case by January 30, then file his initial motions to dismiss — which will significantly overlap with what he already filed in Delaware, but under an order from Judge Scarsi will be a fraction of the length of those in Delaware — on February 20.

Notably, Lowell is not asking for an extension until after he submits his MTDs in Los Angeles. Rather, he asked for an extension to the day those MTDs are due, meaning his response would coincide with the Los Angeles MTDs.

As it stands, then, the reveal of his hacking and venue theories in the two hacking lawsuits will coincide, and the reveal of his plans in the tax case and the IRS lawsuit will coincide.

Looking at the timeline below, some of what Lowell is doing becomes clear.

John Paul Mac Isaac decided to sue Hunter based on a single statement the President’s son made in 2021, one that did not even mention JPMI. That statement was:

There could be a laptop out there that was stolen from me. It could be that I was hacked. It could be that it was the – that it was Russian intelligence. It could be that it was stolen from me. Or that there was a laptop stolen from me.

The statement provided Hunter the opportunity to countersue for something that wouldn’t involve discovery into his entire life.

More importantly, the countersuit gave Hunter a way to obtain JPMI’s copy of Hunter’s data, which is undoubtedly one of the things that gave him the opportunity to sue Ziegler and Rudy (and subpoena Apple), which will — if those lawsuits survive motions to dismiss — provide a way to obtain discovery about the laptop caper from them. Based on that laptop, Hunter has now publicly alleged that his data — the data shared with the FBI and Congress — was stolen.

The competing claims for summary judgment are briefed and ready for a hearing in Delaware.

Even as he was collecting data from JPMI, Hunter also started getting discovery in his criminal cases. Thus far, at least, there’s a great deal that’s in the public record that David Weiss is refusing to officially give Hunter (note, the language covering the three discovery productions below doesn’t claim to have provided discovery on the FARA prongs of the investigation, the prongs that implicate Donald Trump’s crimes).

Then there’s the Dick Pic Sniffing investigation by James Comer and Jim Jordan. I and virtually everyone else you ask says it is insane for Hunter Biden to sit for a deposition before two hostile committees. But I’m … intrigued by the fact that, by using Comer and Jordan’s ineptitude to win a delay, Lowell has ensured that Hunter will have not only have visibility on what JPMI did by the time of the deposition (possibly, though unlikely, even a judgment against him), including on the hard drive the blind computer repairman gave exclusively to Republicans, but he also will have a great deal of visibility not just into the scope of the two charged cases against him, but also the FBI’s provably inadequate treatment of the laptop.

Finally, consider the challenges added by David Weiss’ decision to charge Hunter in two venues, Delaware and Los Angeles. Yes, Hunter is facing two Trump appointees, Maryellen Noreika and Mark Scarsi. But for several of Hunter’s motions to dismiss, if a motion works in one venue, it’ll do real damage to the case in the other one. Lowell already argued that if Judge Noreika rules that the diversion agreement was in effect, it would also bar any but the misdemeanor tax charges in Los Angeles.

Although the only charges now before the Court are the gun charges in the prosecution’s lone Indictment of Mr. Biden in this District, Mr. Biden notes that the sweeping immunity of the Diversion Agreement would seem to bar any plausible charge that could be brought against him (including the recently filed tax charges in California). The only charges that are not be barred by the immunity provision are those filed in the pre-existing Informations filed against him in this District. The Diversion Agreement called for the eventual dismissal of the gun charge Information upon the conclusion of the diversion period, but the prosecution already has dismissed it. Although the Plea Agreement was not accepted on the misdemeanor tax charge Information, the prosecution has dismissed that Information as well. Consequently, the Diversion Agreement’s immunity for gun and tax-related charges would bar any similar charge from now being filed. This sweeping immunity may make it difficult for the prosecutors to appease Mr. Trump and the Republican congressmen who have criticized them, but this is the deal that the prosecutors made and it reflects their choice to place the immunity provision in the Diversion Agreement.

When Lowell argues a selective and vindictive prosecution claim in Los Angeles, he might integrate more information on how the manufactured uproar created by the IRS agents, Comer and Jordan, and Trump led to threats against prosecutors, including David Weiss personally (and also, notably, Los Angeles US Attorney Martin Estrada). More importantly, he’ll already have the DOJ decision that his claim that Ziegler and Shapley were grossly negligent in the way they released Hunter’s tax information (and spoiled the jury pool) has some merit. Perhaps that even gives Lowell cause to ask to delay the prosecution. Also since Lowell first filed a challenge to Weiss’ appointment as a Special Counsel, the degree to which he has never been adequately supervised by a political appointee has become clear, perhaps inviting a Morison v. Olson challenge that might have more merit than the existing challenge.

There are a lot of moving parts here. And while DOJ is still withholding data that is relevant, Lowell actually has information that DOJ likely does not.

I’m really not arguing this is 8-dimensional chess. Hunter is still in a world of hurt.

But Abbe Lowell may well have some dramatic reveals prepared, dramatic reveals that make Hunter’s twin appearances in DC just a preview of coming attractions.

Updated Tax lawsuit below to reflect that Judge Kelly approved the delay.

1) Delaware gun case

[RECAP docket]

September 14: Indictment

October 3: Arraignment

October 12: First Discovery Production (350 pages focused on gun case), including iCloud data and “a copy of data from the defendant’s laptop”

October 13: Motion to Continue

October 19: Order resetting deadlines

November 1: Second Discovery Production (700,000 pages on tax charges — no mention of FARA investigations)

November 15: Hunter subpoena request

December 4: Weiss subpoena response

December 11: Motions due

December 12: Hunter subpoena reply

January 9: Third Discovery Production (500,000 pages focused on tax case)

January 16: Responses due

January 30: Replies due

2) Los Angeles tax case

[RECAP docket]

Hunter was indicted on December 7 and made a combined arraignment/first appearance on January 11. At that hearing, Judge Mark Scarsi set an aggressive (and, from the sounds of things, strict) schedule as follows:

February 20, 2024: Motions due

March 11: Response due

March 18: Replies due

March 27 at 1:00 p.m.: Pretrial motion hearing

April 17: Orders resolving pretrial motions.

June 3 at 1:00 p.m.: Status conference

June 20: Trial

3) House Dick Pic Sniffing Investigation

November 8: James Comer sends a pre-impeachment vote subpoena

November 28: Lowell accepts Comer’s offer for Hunter to testify publicly

December 6: Comer and Jordan threaten contempt

December 13: Pre-impeachment deposition scheduled; Hunter gives a press conference and states his data has been “stolen” from him

December 13: Impeachment vote authorizing subpoena

January 10: Oversight and Judiciary refer Hunter for contempt

January 12: Lowell invites Comer and Jordan to send another subpoena, now that they have the authority to enforce it

January 14: Jordan and Comer take Lowell up on his invitation

February 28 (tentative): Deposition

4) IRS lawsuit

[RECAP docket]

September 18: Privacy Act lawsuit

November 13: DOJ asks for extension to January 16

January 16: DOJ files motion for partial dismissal

January 23: Joint motion to continue

January 30: Original deadline for Hunter response

February 20: New deadline for Hunter response

March 12: New reply deadline for DOJ response

5) John Paul Mac Isaac’s Suit and Countersuit

Last summer, John Paul Mac Isaac and Hunter both sat for depositions, on May 31 and June 29, respectively.

Last fall, Hunter Biden subpoenaed people Rudy Giuliani, Robert Costello, Steve Bannon, Yaacov Apelbaum (who made a copy of the contents of the laptop), Tore Maras (who has described adding things to the laptop). In November, Hunter also served a subpoena on Apple.

On January 4, the parties to John Paul Mac Isaac’s suit and countersuit filed to have their pending motions decided by a judge. The media defendants — CNN and Politico — are filing to dismiss. Hunter and JPMI filed competing motions for summary judgment.

And Hunter is filing to quash a bunch of subpoenas, initially 14, to Hunter’s parents, uncle, ex-wife, former business partners, and several people with his father, like Ron Klain and Mike Morell. Though after that, JPMI attempted to subpoena Hunter’s daughters.

6 and 7) Garrett Ziegler and Rudy Giuliani hacking suits

[RECAP Ziegler docket; RECAP Rudy docket]

September 13: Complaint against Ziegler

September 26: Complaint against Rudy and Costello; noticing Ziegler suit as related case

November 15: Ziegler gets 30 day extension

December 1: Costello gets 30 day extension

December 7: After swapping attorneys, Ziegler gets extension to December 21

December 21: Ziegler motion to dismiss and request for judicial notice (heavily reliant on JPMI suit)

January 17: Costello motion to dismiss with Rudy declaration that makes no notice of his fruit and nuts payments relating to Hunter Biden

January 22: Lowell successfully requests to harmonize MTD hearing for both hacking lawsuits

February 8: Rescheduled date for hearing on motion to dismiss

February 22: Rescheduled date for hearing on motion to dismiss

March 21: Joined date for hearing on motion to dismiss

8) Patrick Byrne defamation suit

November 8: Complaint

January 16: After swapping attorneys, Byrne asks for 30 day extension

February 6: Rescheduled response date

How One New Hampshire Voter and One Politico Journalist Refused to Hold “a Pig … a Womanizer … [an] Arrogant Asshole” Accountable

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Politico has an interesting profile of a two-time Obama voter, who will today become a three-time Trump voter, New Hampshire voter Ted Johnson.

It demonstrates that Johnson is driven by the very same false beliefs that Scott Perry is, which I laid out here.

Johnson admits that Trump is a pig. He even admits some concern about Trump’s stolen documents — before he parrots the false claims he learned on Fox News about that investigation.

And the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case in Florida? It’s the one that gives Johnson a modicum of pause. “You don’t f— around with classified material. Whoever advised him he could have that — he should have gave that s— up,” he said. “But he was being the stubborn, arrogant person that he is.” And he added, “I didn’t like the way the FBI did it. The raid was ridiculous. And that just emboldened me.”

But nevertheless Johnson will vote for the pig … womanizer … arrogant asshole today because he believes that Trump will bring accountability.

“And trust me, the guy’s a pig, he’s a womanizer — arrogant a—–e,” Johnson said of Trump. “But I need somebody that’s going to go in and lead, and I need somebody that’s going to take care of the average guy.”

“But is taking care of the average guy and breaking the system the same thing?” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Because they’re all in it for themselves.”

“And if you break the system, what does that look like?”

“Accountability,” he said.

Go read it. It’s precisely the dynamic that I’m preparing to write about: how Trump trained people like Scott Perry and Ted Johnson to hate rule of law while calling that disdain for rule of law “accountability.”

But while you’re reading it, watch journalist Michael Kruse’s own blindspot. For much of the article, Kruse lets Johnson babble on, voicing his false beliefs about Trump’s legal woes.

Kruse largely lets Johnson spout those false beliefs unchallenged. But he pushes back when Johnson raises Hunter Biden.

Sort of.

Johnson started talking about “Russia-gate” and “Biden’s scandals” and Hunter Biden. What, I wondered, did Hunter Biden have to do with Nikki Haley? “She’s not going to hold anybody accountable for what they’ve done,” Johnson told me. “People need to be held accountable. That’s why you’ve got to break the system to fix the system,” he said. “Because it’s a zero-sum game right now. And to be honest with you, the Democrats are genius. They did anything they could do to win and gain power, even if they lie, cheat, steal. … What they’re doing is they’re destroying the country. Who could bring it back?” He answered his own question: “Trump’s the only one.” [my emphasis]

Rather than contest Johnson’s premise that Joe Biden has scandals, Kruse instead challenges Johnson as to what Hunter has to do with Nikki Haley.

Then later in the story, Kruse himself raises Hunter Biden as the counterpart of accountability to Trump.

“Accountability is accountability. But they’re throwing so much stuff at this guy, and it’s almost like I’m rooting for him,” he told me. “This is a whole system of government going after one man who, probably, I bet, right now, 85 million people want to be president.”

“But accountability is accountability,” I said.

“Accountability is accountability,” he said.

“Whether it’s Hunter Biden or Donald Trump,” I said.

“But do I trust the system?” he said. “I don’t.”

Kruse himself, who has actually been pretty sympathetic to Joe Biden in the past, likens the President’s son’s alleged crimes to Trump’s coup attempt.

Now, perhaps Kruse allowed Johnson to make all these false claims uncontested simply to let him talk. It’s a useful interview. I shouldn’t gripe.

But adopting Hunter Biden as the counterpart of accountability for Trump is itself a false claim. It’s why I spend so much time calling out shoddy dick pic sniffing stenography.

The record shows that even if everything Republicans allege about Hunter Biden were true (and at this point, DOJ has let statutes of limitation on FARA crimes expire without charges, so it seems that in going-on-six-years of looking, DOJ never substantiated FARA crimes), his actions still wouldn’t come close to those of Paul Manafort, whom Trump pardoned with nary a whisper.

Perhaps a better response to Johnson’s complaints about Hunter Biden would be a question about Trump’s decision to pardon Manafort for doing far worse? How is that accountability? Manafort is the quintessential sleazy insider and he gets a pass.

Plus, the record shows that Trump’s crimes are not a mirror of Hunter’s; rather, Trump’s crimes cannot be dissociated from the charges against Hunter.

The record shows that Trump started pushing Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas to gin up an investigation into Hunter Biden no later than December 2018, at such time as Joseph Ziegler was struggling to come up with some excuse to turn non-payment of taxes into a criminal case.

The record according to Johnathan Buma shows that before DOJ opened a grand jury investigation into Hunter Biden, FBI agents on the investigation enthusiastically accepted dirt on Hunter Biden from two Ukrainians that Buma would acknowledge were part of an influence operation.

The record shows that four days after Joe Biden announced he was running for President, DOJ decided the grand jury investigation into Hunter Biden would be in Delaware, where Joe might one day become a target, rather than Washington DC or Los Angeles, where any tax crimes would have happened. Ziegler first claimed, then backed off a claim, that Bill Barr made this decision personally.

The record shows that the first IRS supervisor on this case documented what he viewed to be problems with the predication of it and ongoing political influence into it.

The record shows that Donald Trump extorted Volodymyr Zelenskyy in an attempt to get an investigation into Hunter  Biden and his father. In that same conversation, he asked Zelenskyy to work with both his personal attorney and with Bill Barr to gin up such an investigation.

The record according to Chuck Grassley shows that even while Trump was claiming to care about Burisma corruption, his DOJ shut down an investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky, one that had been opened while Joe Biden was Vice President and Hunter was on the board of Burisma. Grassley says DOJ shut that investigation down in December 2019.

The record shows that the day after DOJ obtained a warrant to access a laptop obtained from John Paul Mac Isaac, Barr’s chief of staff texted him to say, “laptop on way to you.”

The record shows that days later, Bill Barr set up a dedicated channel by which Rudy Giuliani could share dirt he had obtained, including from a known Russian spy and almost certainly from Burisma, such that it could be laundered into the investigation into Hunter Biden.

The record shows that that process resulted in DOJ obtaining an informant report describing a conversation with Zlochevsky. Remarkably, the FBI neglected to write down what date that conversation happened even though that’s how they validated that it did occur, but it almost certainly dates to the period when DOJ was shutting down an investigation into Zlochevsky. The informant report recorded a claim of bribery of Joe Biden that conflicted with claims Zlochevsky had made just months earlier, when DOJ was (per Chuck Grassley) still investigating him.

The record shows that FBI made Steve Bannon associate Peter Schweizer an informant so he could pitch Hunter Biden dirt leading up to the 2020 election.

The record shows that Trump bitched Bill Barr out about the Hunter Biden investigation shortly after the October 14, 2020 NYPost story on the hard drive from Hunter Biden. Days later, Richard Donoghue ordered the Hunter Biden investigators to accept a briefing about that bribery allegation.

The record shows that, shortly before David Weiss used the FD-1023 obtained during the course of Scott Brady’s effort to launder dirt into the Hunter Biden investigation to justify reneging on the plea deal he had agreed to, Bill Barr described being personally involved in the handling of it.

The record shows that, the day after Trump hosted Tony Bobulinski at a Presidential debate, Bobulinski told the FBI things that conflict with his own communications.

The record according to Cassidy Hutchinson shows that shortly after that Bobulinski interview with the FBI, he had a secret meeting with Mark Meadows at which Trump’s Chief of Staff handed Bobulinski something that might be an envelope.

The record shows that, in the same call where Trump threatened to replace Jeffrey Rosen if he didn’t start endorsing Trump’s claims of voter fraud, he also criticized the handling of the Hunter Biden case.

The record shows that Trump repeatedly, publicly, demanded criminal charges against Hunter Biden, including in the January 6 speech that set off an insurrection.

The record shows that when Trump first learned he’d be indicted, he raised pressure on the Hunter Biden investigation.

The record shows that on the day Hunter’s plea deal was released, Trump complained three times, twice suggesting Joe Biden was implicated in this plea deal.

“Wow! The corrupt Biden DOJ just cleared up hundreds of years of criminal liability by giving Hunter Biden a mere ‘traffic ticket.’ Our system is BROKEN!

“A ‘SWEETHEART’ DEAL FOR HUNTER (AND JOE), AS THEY CONTINUE THEIR QUEST TO ‘GET’ TRUMP, JOE’S POLITICAL OPPONENT. WE ARE NOW A THIRD WORLD COUNTRY!”

“The Hunter/Joe Biden settlement is a massive COVERUP & FULL SCALE ELECTION INTERFERENCE ‘SCAM’ THE LIKES OF WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN SEEN IN OUR COUNTRY BEFORE. A ‘TRAFFIC TICKET,’ & JOE IS ALL CLEANED UP & READY TO GO INTO THE 2024 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION. . . .”

The record shows that, among the other complaints and false claims Trump made about Hunter’s prosecution, one targeted David Weiss and demanded a death sentence.

Weiss is a COWARD, a smaller version of Bill Barr, who never had the courage to do what everyone knows should have been done. He gave out a traffic ticket instead of a death sentence. . . .

The record shows that when Trump attacks people on social media, they get threats, often so bad as to uproot their entire lives.

The record also shows that former President Trump’s words have real-world consequences. Many of those on the receiving end of his attacks pertaining to the 2020 election have been subjected to a torrent of threats and intimidation from his supporters. A day after Mr. Trump’s “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU!” post, someone called the district court and said: “Hey you stupid slave n[****]r[.] * * * If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly b[***]h. * * * You will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it.” Special Counsel Br. 5; see United States v. Shry, No. 4:23-cr-413, ECF 1 at 3 (Criminal Complaint) (S.D. Tex. Aug. 11, 2023). The Special Counsel also has advised that he has received threats, and that a prosecutor in the Special Counsel’s office whom Mr. Trump has singled out for criticism has been “subject to intimidating communications.” Special Counsel Mot. 12.

The record shows that investigators in the Hunter Biden case were, just like prosecutors on Trump’s own cases, threatened in response to manufactured political outrage. That includes David Weiss himself. Here’s how former AUSA Lesley Wolf described those threats.

My desire to serve my community and my country, such a great source of pride, has recently come at significant cost. As a private person, the once routine and mundane details of my life have become the subject of public interest in an invasive and disturbing manner. Far worse, I’ve been threatened and harassed, causing me to fear for my own and my family’s safety.

I mentioned earlier that I recently left the U.S. Attorney’s Office. My decision to do so long predated and was unconnected to the baseless allegations made against me. In fact, I agreed to stay with the office months longer than planned because of my belief that my family and I were safer while I remained an AUSA.

I have no doubt that after today the threats of harassment and my own fear stemming from them will heighten. This not only scares me, but as someone who loves this country, it also breaks my heart.

We are living in a day and age where politics and winning seem to be paramount, and the truth has become collateral damage.

In short, the record shows that Trump was always a part of the Hunter Biden investigation.

I think the record is pretty clear that Hunter Biden owned a gun for 11 days during the worst days of his addiction. The record is pretty clear that as he tried to rebuild his life, it took several years to straighten out his taxes — but less time than it took Roger Stone to straighten out his taxes, even while the rat-fucker was using a shell company to shield his funds from the IRS.

But the story of Hunter Biden’s alleged crimes — the things that Michael Kruse seems to think mirror Trump’s 91 felony charges — is a story that cannot be told (or should not, were journalism engaged in a responsible pursuit), without also telling the story of Trump’s extortion, Rudy’s consorting with Russian spies, Bill Barr’s hijacking of DOJ for partisan purpose, Bobulinski’s seemingly inconsistent story and whatever role the secret meeting with Meadows had in that story, and Trump eliciting dangerous threats against every participant in the legal system who does not bow to his will, including on this case.

I get that journalists believe that the story of Hunter Biden is a story of DOJ holding Biden’s family member accountable for what they gleefully report are real crimes.

But it is, no less than that, a story of Trump crimes, including, possibly, under two statutes that prohibit this kind of pressure explicitly, 26 USC 7217 and 26 USC 7212. The story of Hunter Biden’s prosecution is the story of Trump’s successful going-on-six-year effort to hijack rule of law to target Joe Biden, an effort that builds on years of similar conduct targeting Hillary Clinton.

I’m grateful that Kruse has depicted Johnson’s nonsensical beliefs in all their absurdity. It’s an absolutely critical step in underestanding how Trump taught Republicans to hate rule of law.

But another step is in unpacking how journalists have come to reflexively equate Hunter Biden with Donald Trump, how journalists have come to simply ignore the five years of corruption that Trump and his lawyers engaged in to get us here, how journalists are not remotely curious about details in the public record about this case.

The reflexive equation of Hunter Biden with the President who targeted him for over five years is an equation every bit as manufactured by Donald Trump as Ted Johnson’s pathetic belief that Trump brings accountability rather than the opposite.

Hunter Biden Lost His Phone(s) in the Same Days He Bought a Gun

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Ho hum. Another day, another David Weiss filing that may face significant evidentiary challenges at trial.

In past posts, I have shown how one after another sex worker, payments to whom prosecutors have made central to their allegations that Hunter Biden cheated on his taxes, may pose evidentiary problems if the case goes to trial.

In one case, David Weiss included in the tax indictment the first Venmo payment — and its misleading payment description and Weiss’ likely incorrect date — that Hunter made after two new devices accessed the account, 12 minutes apart, from two different cities. In another, I showed that a sex worker the IRS actually interviewed about her dates with Hunter was among the last people Hunter spent time with before he attempted to reclaim the part of his digital life hosted at Apple, using a laptop that would eventually be found at Fox News pundit-shrink Keith Ablow’s office when the DEA searched it in February 2020.

Even as the IRS spent years scrutinizing Hunter’s digital payments, they appear to have ignored how his digital life faced one after another compromise, most (but potentially not all) undoubtedly arising from the erratic habits of an addict. Those potential compromises should have elicited an entirely different investigative focus, but they also will make any digital evidence obtained from Hunter Biden’s devices difficult and at times impossible to validate for trial.

Take the texts that Hunter Biden sent Hallie in the two days after he purchased the gun for which he has been charged with three felonies, texts that Weiss has admitted he did not seek until last year, apparently only after indicting the President’s son. Prosecutors are very excited about obtaining these texts, after the fact, to prove that Hunter was smoking crack during the days he possessed a gun.

On October 13, 2018, and October 14, 2018 (the day after and two days after he purchased the firearm), the defendant messaged his girlfriend about meeting a drug dealer and smoking crack. For example, on October 13, 2018, the defendant messaged her and stated, “. . . I’m now off MD Av behind blue rocks stadium waiting for a dealer named Mookie.” The next day, the defendant messaged her and stated, “I was sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th street and Rodney.”

Weiss doesn’t say what time these texts were sent. Nor does he say whether these were telephony or app texts (Hunter was using at least WhatsApp in the period), and if the former, via which phone account.

But it happened on the same days that Hunter was informed that someone, whose name does not otherwise show up in public emails, emailed Hunter to tell him “you left your phone,” followed, after three attempts, by a shared Note that appears to link to a live Apple account (the times here are UTC-3, so one hour ahead of EDT; I hope I’ve adjusted all the times below to EDT).

And, indeed, Hunter does appear to have left his phone — or phones, plural — somewhere, probably the day before he bought the gun.

In those same two days in which those texts were sent to Hallie, there were four different attempts to replace phones via an Asurian protection plan, two of which ended in the delivery of phones he is known to have adopted as his primary phones afterwards, two of which tied to other numbers that ended in uncertain status. In addition to those iPhones he would use to replace his main phones, Hunter (or someone else) accessed his digital identity from a Samsung Galaxy, a rare deviation from Hunter’s commitment to Apple products.

A week later Hunter’s account would begin to be accessed using the laptop that would ultimately end up with the FBI.

The traffic for just those three days looks like this, with the emails from Joey bolded and two key account changes italicized:

October 12, 12:56PM: As you requested, your temporary [AT&T] password is: ****** Use your user ID and temporary password to sign in to your account.

October 12, 12:56PM: Looks like you recently updated the AT&T password.

October 12, 12:57PM: Critical security alert for your linked Google Account, Sign-in attempt was blocked for your linked [RosemontSeneca] Google Account [device not specified]

October 12, 3:25PM: Thanks for using your AT&T Device Protection Plan! Your claim [ending in 431] has been started

October 12, 3:32PM: Thanks for using your AT&T Device Protection Plan! Your claim [ending in 431] has been started

October 12, 3:38PM: Thanks for using your AT&T Device Protection Plan! Your claim [ending in 579] has been started

October 12, 3:40PM: Your [AT&T] insurance claim [phone ending in 96]

October 12, 3:44PM: Your [AT&T] insurance claim [phone ending in 13]

October 12, 3:49PM: Thanks for using your AT&T Device Protection Plan! Your claim [ending in 701] has been started

October 12, 3:55PM: Please complete and return your claim documents Wireless Number: **94

October 12, 3:57PM: Thanks for using your AT&T Device Protection Plan! Your claim [ending in 799] has been started

October 12, 4:03PM: Please complete and return your claim documents Wireless Number: **29

October 12, 5:35PM: Hello. Review your AT&T order

October 12, 6:22PM: Good news. Your replacement device [grey Apple iPhoneX] has shipped. [phone ending in 13]

October 12, 6:24PM: Phone [from Joey]

Hey, You left your phone and other things. Tried to reach you at 202 and 302 all day but no luck. Let me know where to overnight.

October 12, 7:20PM: Good news. Your replacement device [iPhone 8] has shipped. [phone ending in 96]

October 12, 8:00PM: Verify your Samsung account [accessing Hunter’s iCloud]

October 12, 11:31PM: Someone Just Checked Your Background Report

October 13, 7:10AM: You left your phone. How do I get it to you?

joey

October 13, 7:26AM: You left your phone. How do I get it to you?

joey

October 13, 11:13AM: Let’s setup your AT&T replacement device [phone ending in 13]

October 13, 12:35AM: Someone Just Checked Your Background Report

October 13, 2:00PM: Hello, Review your AT&T order [changes to wireless]

October 13, 9:17PM: Your [RosemontSeneca] Google Account was just signed in to from a new Samsung Galaxy Note 9 device

October 13, 11:36PM: Wells Fargo Has Registered Your Mobile Device

October 14, 2:24PM: Your Apple ID password has been reset

October 14, 2:24PM: Your Apple ID was used to sign in to iCloud on an iPhone X

October 14, 3:28PM: Wells Fargo card added to Apple Pay

October 14, 3:36PM: Verify your Samsung account [on iCloud]

October 14, 7:48PM: “Overcoming myself” [from Joey]

When you have a minute, read ….

Open my shared note:

Interspersed with this traffic, Hunter’s accountant was trying to get him to file his 2017 taxes, Twitter was informing him of this story showing that Jared Kushner hadn’t paid taxes for years, Hunter was draining his bank account one $800 withdrawal after another, and his business partner was approving a payment to Hunter’s lawyer that would all but drain the Hudson West business associated with CEFC. A different business partner, Eric Schwerin, was also pushing Hunter to resolve their business interests during the 2018 tax year, something he failed to pull off.

Without the location and IP addresses, it’s not entirely sure what happened here (Weiss should have that with the iCloud data). It’s not even clear that Hunter had a phone, at all, between the time he lost his phones, plural, on October 11 and started using his new iPhone X on October 14 (though he did have a third phone tied to an account he used with sex workers). Hunter may have used the Samsung as a temporary phone for those two days or borrowed someone else’s Samsung to check his email; but it wasn’t verified to his iCloud account before October 14 at 3:36PM, and so may not have been able to access some Apple services. Importantly, however, that phone accessed his RosemontSeneca Google account after Hunter had started using one of his new replacement iPhones, something that doesn’t make sense if he was borrowing it.

If the texts to Hallie were sent after Hunter changed his wireless account at 2PM on October 13, they might be traced to a secure telephony account. But if they were sent via iMessage or WhatsApp before Hunter changed his iCloud password at 2:24PM on October 14, then you’d have to use location and IP data to rule out that someone else sent those texts to Hallie, using Hunter’s still accessible iCloud account via his lost phones (plural, apparently).

Because this particular verification challenge involves iCloud, which should have the location and IP data to verify which devices were used, and because (unlike the sex workers) it wouldn’t involve Hunter’s copresence with someone accessing his bank account via biometrics that others might access if he were wasted, this should be something that prosecutors could definitively prove, if indeed Hunter did send these texts.

If they can’t prove the location and IP from which these texts were sent, they may not be admissible at all, because prosecutors may not be able to prove that they are, in fact, Hunter’s words and not those of someone using his lost phones.

If this goes to trial, it might be worth forcing prosecutors to go through the effort to prove Hunter did send the texts, because it not only demonstrates how uncertain this evidence can be five years after the fact, but it would also show that Hunter spent hours trying to reclaim his digital identity — possibly using the laptop that would end up in Ablow’s possession — during the period when, prosecutors would be arguing, he was sleeping [in] a car and smoking crack.

Plus, that process would demonstrate something else. First, note that Hunter never verifiably made efforts that he did in August (the day before the dual Venmo access) to shut down access others would have via those lost devices to his digital identity. There’s no evidence here that Hunter deleted those phones, as he had only just finished doing weeks earlier with an iPad taken in August. That is, if Joey or whoever had one or two phones that Hunter had been using for weeks or months, there would be a great deal of data on them that would allow them, or anyone who subsequently got the phones, to carry out a much more systematic compromise of Hunter’s digital identity in the future.

There’s also no evidence that Hunter changed passwords besides the AT&T one, including for the RosemontSeneca email account that hosted all the work emails that would become so controversial years later. If he didn’t do that, then at least one of those two lost phones could likely access that account without interruption.

I’m not yet ready to show it, but this process, the incomplete effort to reclaim his digital identity, continued through the period where Hunter’s account started being accessed by a new laptop on October 21. And, depending on how the progression from prosecutors’ initial August 2019 iCloud warrant to the December 2019 warrant for that same laptop itself to the warrant to expanded scope of Hunter’s iCloud in July 2020 culminating in December 2023 in the use of those iCloud texts to substantiate a gun case occurred — something that Derek Hines deliberately obfuscates in this same filing — it may mean that this entire investigation has been built on this impossibly rocky foundation since 2019.

The laptop that FBI started using as evidence without first fully validating it destroys chain of custody not just because it was accessed by a hostile person over the course of months before being delivered to the FBI, but also because Hunter’s use of it would have been built on a digital identity that was totally compromised.

Normally, financial records are what make tax cases easy to prove (and, to be sure, many of the financial records used for Hunter’s tax indictment will be easily verifiable). Normally, these kinds of digital communications are what make other indictments easy to prove without having to rely on a sympathetic witness like Hallie Biden, one personally implicated in the insecure disposal of a gun.

But even ignoring the likelihood that more nefarious people might have compromised Hunter’s identity in this period (for which these is some evidence), Hunter’s addiction meant that his digital identity was persistently in a state of half-compromise through this entire period. His addiction led him to do things that prosecutors have now charged him for. It also adds a good deal of validation challenges for the kind of evidence that normally is routine.

David Weiss’ Indict First, Seek Warrants Later Ethic

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I want to further elaborate on a point in this post: It appears that David Weiss did not obtain a reliable warrant for the most showy evidence in his response motion to Hunter’s selective and vindictive prosecution claim until after he indicted Hunter for 3 gun felonies — indeed, he appears not to have obtained it until after Abbe Lowell asked for this kind of evidence.

I think it likely that, as a result, David Weiss will technically be relying on evidence from the laptop he obtained from John Paul Mac Isaac, which (as I’ll show in a follow-up), may be a particularly acute problem for the period in question.

I’ve put a timeline below, relying on Weiss’ response motions on selective prosecution and discovery. Because Weiss did not provide dates for any of the warrants described in the former, I’ve noted the closest unsealed dockets before and after each warrant docket included to approximate the dates for those warrants.

The gun indictment, which Weiss obtained just before the statute of limitations expired, did not provide any proof that Hunter Biden was an addict when he purchased a gun on October 12, 2018. It simply stated, for each of three charges, that he knew he was.

[T]he defendant, Robert Hunter Biden, provided a written statement on Form 4473 certifying he was not an unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious.

It’s true that on July 26, 2023, Hunter Biden admitted he was in treatment for addiction in Fall 2018 — but that admission was obtained with the promise of a diversion agreement — a point that Abbe Lowell noted in his motion to dismiss on immunity grounds.

Hunter was arraigned — initially with a 30-day deadline for pretrial motions — on October 3, 2023. At the hearing, Lowell said that he was going to ask for an evidentiary hearing, which (along with his TV appearances) would have alerted Weiss that he would seek to dismiss the indictment.

By Weiss’ own admission, he didn’t provide any discovery until October 12, four days after Abbe Lowell asked. He describes that that initial production, of just 350 pages, included “statements of the defendant including his admissions that he was addicted to crack cocaine and possessed a firearm in 2018,” electronic evidence from Hunter’s iCloud account, as well as “search warrants related to evidence the government may use in its case-in-chief.”

On October 12, 2023, the government provided to the defendant a production of materials consisting of over 350 pages of documents as well as additional electronic evidence from the defendant’s Apple iCloud account and a copy of data from the defendant’s laptop. This production included search warrants related to evidence the government may use in its case-in-chief in the gun case, statements of the defendant including his admissions that he was addicted to crack cocaine and possessed a firearm in 2018, and law enforcement reports related to the gun investigation. [my emphasis]

But he doesn’t say he provided all the warrants behind the evidence the government will use in its case-in-chief.

As I’ve noted, Hunter’s book is 272 pages long, so if Weiss included the book in that initial production, then there were only 78 other pages, to include warrants and law enforcement reports pertaining to the gun.

Among the things Lowell asked for in that initial discovery request was information “reflecting Mr. Biden’s sobriety in 2018” and “information reflecting Mr. Biden’s treatment for any substance or alcohol abuse in 2018.”

Weiss described that he provided evidence about payments to rehab programs in 2018 (this will include Keith Ablow!!!) on November 1.

On November 1, 2023, the government provided a production of materials to the defendant that was over 700,000 pages and largely consisted of documents obtained during an investigation into whether the defendant timely filed and paid his taxes and committed tax evasion. These documents included information of the defendant’s income and payments to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs in 2018, the same year in which the defendant possessed the firearm while addicted to controlled substances.

Weiss didn’t describe providing any more information about Hunter’s addiction or sobriety.

Weiss didn’t describe providing any more discovery — and didn’t describe providing any more warrants at all — until January 9, almost a month after Lowell’s deadline for pretrial motions, including motions to suppress.

In advance of his initial appearance on the tax indictment, the government made a production of materials to the defendant on January 9, 2024, which included over 500,000 pages of documents and consisted of additional information related to the tax investigation.

Yet, by Weiss’ own admission, he never had a warrant to access iCloud content for gun charges — as opposed to tax and foreign influence charges — until he got it with District of Delaware Case No. 23-507M. If my approximations below are correct, Weiss didn’t obtain a warrant to search Hunter’s iCloud content for gun charges until sometime between November 30 and December 4 of last year. As noted previously, I asked Weiss’ spox to correct me if this was an error, but they declined to comment beyond what is in the filing.

Weiss is wildly squirrely about all this, as I’ll show. But he basically admits that he’s relying on that warrant — which it appears he obtained over two months after indicting Hunter — for the only evidence in this motion that shows Hunter’s drug use during the period he possessed the gun (and as noted, Weiss doesn’t describe when in 2023 the FBI first decided to send the gun to a lab for testing, but he admits it wasn’t until 2023).

Prior to October 12, 2018 (the date of the gun purchase), the defendant took photos of crack cocaine and drug paraphernalia on his phone.

Also prior to his gun purchase, the defendant routinely sent messages about purchasing drugs.

On October 13, 2018, and October 14, 2018 (the day after and two days after he purchased the firearm), the defendant messaged his girlfriend about meeting a drug dealer and smoking crack. For example, on October 13, 2018, the defendant messaged her and stated, “. . . I’m now off MD Av behind blue rocks stadium waiting for a dealer named Mookie.” The next day, the defendant messaged her and stated, “I was sleeping on a car smoking crack on 4th street and Rodney.”

On October 23, 2018 (the day his then-girlfriend discarded his firearm), the defendant messaged his girlfriend and asked, “Did you take that from me [girlfriend]?” Later that evening, after his interactions with law enforcement, he messaged her about the “[t]he fucking FBI” and asked her, “so what’s my fault here [girlfriend] that you speak of. Owning a gun that’s in a locked car hidden on another property? You say I invade your privacy. What more can I do than come back to you to try again. And you do this???? Who in their right mind would trust you would help me get sober.” In response, the girlfriend stated “I’m sorry, I just want you safe. That was not safe. And it was open unlocked and windows down and the kids search your car. You have lost your mind hunter. I’m sorry I handled it poorly today but you are in huge denial about yourself and about that reality that I just want you safe. You run away like a child and blame me for your shit . . .”

Elsewhere in this response, Weiss quotes liberally from Hunter’s book, but the book really doesn’t say much about Hunter’s state in the 11 days he owned the gun.

I had returned that fall of 2018, after my most recent relapse in California, with the hope of getting clean through a new therapy and reconciling with Hallie.

Here’s how Weiss — in the paragraph immediately preceding this evidence — describes how — after Delaware cops had already seized the gun — investigators obtained evidence showing the purchase was illegal:

C. While Investigating the Defendant for Tax Violations, Investigators Obtained Evidence Showing His Prior Gun Purchase Was Illegal Because He Was Addicted to Controlled Substances

In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant’s Apple iCloud account. 2 In response to that warrant, in September 2019, Apple produced backups of data from various of the defendant’s electronic devices that he had backed up to his iCloud account. 3 Investigators also later came into possession of the defendant’s Apple MacBook Pro, which he had left at a computer store. A search warrant was also obtained for his laptop and the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple. 4 Law enforcement also later obtained a search warrant to search the defendant’s electronic evidence for evidence of federal firearms violations and to seize such data. 5

2 District of Delaware Case No. 19-234M and a follow up search warrant, District of Delaware Case Number 20-165M.

3 The electronic evidence referenced in this section was produced to the defendant in discovery in advance of the deadline to file motions.

4 District of Delaware Case No. 19-309M.

5 District of Delaware Case No. 23-507M

Weiss says he first obtained a warrant for Hunter’s iCloud account in August 2019, but that was just for tax violations. He doesn’t describe the temporal scope of that warrant. Joseph Ziegler predicated the investigation off a 2018 Suspicious Activity Report tied to payments to sex workers, but he only got approval for a criminal investigation by claiming — a claim that the tax indictment debunks — that no taxes were paid for his 2014 Burisma payments, so it’s possible that initial warrant only focused on 2014 and 2015 (particularly given that Hunter couldn’t have committed a tax crime in 2018 until October 2019, after that warrant was obtained in August 2019).

In a footnote but not in the text of the paragraph, Weiss mentions, oh, by the way, we got a follow-up warrant in 2020; he doesn’t provide the date, but it would have been between July 9 and 16, 2020. According to Gary Shapley, investigators obtained 2017 texts with that 2020 warrant — which again may suggest that Weiss didn’t obtain later content until after obtaining it first on the laptop.

Back in the main text, Weiss describes obtaining the laptop [bum bum BUM!!!]. But he claims that what he got from the laptop was “largely duplicative” of what he “already obtained” with the iCloud warrant.

Then, finally, he admits he never got a warrant to search the iCloud (he’s silent about the scope of the laptop warrants, but Ziegler only talked about tax and foreign influence peddling scopes) for evidence of gun crimes until that warrant that, if my approximation is correct, was after the indictment and after Weiss claimed to have provided all discovery for the gun crimes.

Note, significantly, that in a footnote Weiss said, “The electronic evidence referenced in this section was produced to the defendant in discovery in advance of the deadline to file motions,” but doesn’t say anything about when he provided that (apparent) December 2023 warrant to Lowell? It’s not clear whether Weiss included this among the iCloud and laptop material provided on October 12, or among the 700,000 pages provided on November 1.

But whichever it is, if I’m right about the timing of that gun crime warrant, Weiss did not yet have a warrant to access that material for the already obtained indictment yet. Lowell had the content, but not the notice that Weiss was going to use it for the gun crime.

And all this is before you consider the possibility that the second warrant, obtained in 2020, relied on the laptop (something that is consistent with Shapley’s testimony). If that’s the case, then Weiss would have a whole slew of other problems — not least, that John Paul Mac Isaac claims FBI was accessing the laptop before the date that Shapley says they got a warrant.

Update: Let me clarify why this matters. There’s no question that there was probable cause for gun crimes available for a warrant affidavit last year. And it is fairly common for prosecutors to get new warrants for content they’ve already seized; SDNY did so against both Michael Cohen and Rudy Giuliani, for example.

One reason this is problematic, though, is the timing. Weiss is arguing that he always intended to prosecute gun crimes, but he appears not to have gotten a warrant until after he charged it, which hurts his argument that he always intended to prosecute it (as does the delay in sending the gun to the lab). So it could hurt Weiss’ chances to win these motions.

Unless one of three things happened, David Weiss would be able to use this data at trial.

  • If the warrant to obtain the 2018 data was the warrant obtained in 2020 and it relied on stuff from the laptop, the laptop may have tainted the 2020 warrant. There are several ways the laptop may have tainted the 2020 warrant, one of which is JPMI’s claim that FBI was accessing the laptop before they got a warrant.
  • As noted, Weiss is really squirrely about when — or even if — it gave Abbe Lowell the warrant for this material. If they gave it to him after the deadline for these motions to suppress, it would mean they’ve deprived him of the ability to file a motion to suppress.

Timeline

August 22, 2019 [19-mj-232]

August 2019: Weiss first obtains iCloud data, for unstated dates, limited to tax crimes [19-mj-234]

In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant’s Apple iCloud account. 2

2 District of Delaware Case No. 19-234M

August 27, 2019: [19-mj-235]

October 16, 2019: Mac Isaac’s father first contacts FBI [Shapley’s notes]

December 3, 2019: Ziegler first starts drafting search warrant for laptop

December 6, 2019: [19-mj-302]

December 9, 2019: FBI takes possession of laptop; per John Paul Mac Isaac, “Matt” called several times, asking for help accessing the machine, and revealing “we” had already tried to boot it up.

“Hi, it’s Matt again. So, we have a power supply and a USB-C cable, but when we boot up, I can’t get the mouse or keyboard to work.”

I couldn’t believe it—they were trying to boot the machine!

“The keyboard and trackpad were disconnected due to liquid damage. If you have a USB-C–to–USB-A adaptor, you should be able to use any USB keyboard or mouse,” I said. He related this to Agent DeMeo and quickly hung up.

Matt called yet again about an hour later.

“So this thing won’t stay on when it’s unplugged. Does the battery work?”

I explained that he needed to plug in the laptop and that once it turned on, the battery would start charging. I could sense his stress and his embarrassment at having to call repeatedly for help. [my emphasis]

December 12, 2019: Obtain OEO approval for warrant

December 13, 2019: Obtain warrant for laptop [date per Shapley]

Investigators also later came into possession of the defendant’s Apple MacBook Pro, which he had left at a computer store. A search warrant was also obtained for his laptop and the results of the search were largely duplicative of information investigators had already obtained from Apple.

4 District of Delaware Case No. 19-309M.

December 13, 2019: [19-mj-311]

December 14, 2019: Will Levi sends Bill Barr text stating, “Laptop on way to you”

July 9, 2020: [20-mj-162]

July 2020: Weiss obtains follow-up warrant, by description still limited to tax crimes (but almost certainly also including foreign influence peddling) [20-mj-165]

In August 2019, IRS and FBI investigators obtained a search warrant for tax violations for the defendant’s Apple iCloud account. 2

2 and a follow up search warrant, District of Delaware Case Number 20-165M.

July 16, 2020: [20-mj-177]

ND, 2023: FBI first does lab tests on gun and finds cocaine residue

September 14, 2023: Gun indictment

October 3, 2023: Arraignment

October 8, 2023: Request for discovery

On October 8, 2023, the defendant made a request for discovery under Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure 16.

October 12, 2023: First discovery production

On October 12, 2023, the government provided to the defendant a production of materials consisting of over 350 pages of documents as well as additional electronic evidence from the defendant’s Apple iCloud account and a copy of data from the defendant’s laptop. This production included search warrants related to evidence the government may use in its case-in-chief in the gun case, statements of the defendant including his admissions that he was addicted to crack cocaine and possessed a firearm in 2018, and law enforcement reports related to the gun investigation. [my emphasis]

November 1, 2023: Discovery production 2

On November 1, 2023, the government provided a production of materials to the defendant that was over 700,000 pages and largely consisted of documents obtained during an investigation into whether the defendant timely filed and paid his taxes and committed tax evasion. These documents included information of the defendant’s income and payments to drug and alcohol rehabilitation programs in 2018, the same year in which the defendant possessed the firearm while addicted to controlled substances.

November 15, 2023: Follow-up request for discovery regarding Trump’s interference and Brady channel

November 15, 2023: Abbe Lowell requests subpoenas for Trump, Bill Barr, and others

November 30, 2023: [23-mj-504]

ND, 2023:

Law enforcement also later obtained a search warrant to search the defendant’s electronic evidence for evidence of federal firearms violations and to seize such data.5

5 District of Delaware Case No. 23-507M

December 4, 2023: [23-mj-508]

December 7, 2023: Tax indictment

December 11, 2023: Hunter’s motions due

ND: Third discovery production

In advance of his initial appearance on the tax indictment, the government made a production of materials to the defendant on January 9, 2024, which included over 500,000 pages of documents and consisted of additional information related to the tax investigation.

January 11, 2023: Arraignment

The Coke-in-Gun Actually Harms David Weiss’ Case

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As prosecutors are wont to do, David Weiss’ prosecution team used its response to Hunter Biden’s selective and vindictive prosecution claim to air embarrassing dirt.

As dick pic sniffing scribes are wont to do, most outlets glommed onto those details — one in particular — rather than discussing Weiss’ legal arguments. NYPost, CNN, AP, WaPo all presented the following detail without any consideration of whether it helps — or hurts — David Weiss’ case against Hunter.

In 2023, FBI investigators pulled sealed evidence from the state police vault to take photographs of the defendant’s firearm. After opening the evidence, FBI investigators observed a white powdery substance on the defendant’s brown leather pouch that had held the defendant’s firearm in October 2018. Based on their training and experience, investigators believed that this substance was likely cocaine and that this evidence would corroborate the messages that investigators had obtained which showed the defendant buying and using drugs in October 2018. An FBI chemist subsequently analyzed the residue and determined that it was cocaine. To be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun.

At the very least, the incident betrays the lack of certain kinds of evidence that Weiss may need to defeat the filing in question — and arguably, helps to prove Hunter’s argument that Weiss only considered gun charges after Republicans started ratcheting up political pressure to do so.

As noted, this is a response to Hunter’s motion to dismiss on selective and vindictive prosecution grounds, in which he argued that:

  • DOJ would not charge other people based on the same set of facts — and indeed had guidelines advising against it
  • In response to political pressure, including but not limited to Republican Members of Congress and Trump, David Weiss reneged on a plea deal and decided to charge Hunter with three felonies rather than respect a diversion agreement
  • Congress forced this issue by demanding Weiss prosecute more harshly

Weiss’ response — written by Derek Hines, the same AUSA who simply did not address some of the evidence of politicization Hunter cited — spent over half the filing addressing Hunter’s selective prosecution claim, in spite of the fact that that’s the easiest claim to rebut. He simply repeated, as all such responses do, that Hunter hasn’t found someone similarly situated who wasn’t charged (the argument surely invites Abbe Lowell to raise Don Jr’s apparent impairment or Trump’s temporary possession of a gun after having been charged with dozens of felonies). There are weaknesses in that section — he ignores DOJ’s guidance, rather than addressing Hunter’s assertion that the charge is used in conjunction with other crimes, he instead uses data on straw purchases (which this was not) to claim Hunter’s lie was itself an aggravating factor.

With this chart, Hines is, at best, misleadingly presenting Hunter’s alleged false statement as a different, far more premeditated false statement than Hunter is accused of.

Abbe Lowell will have plenty of meat to respond to in that section, but as I have said repeatedly, Hunter probably doesn’t offer as much as he’d need to to win a selective prosecution claim.

A vindictive prosecution claim is something else. Hines admits that Hunter describes a right he exercised that was the reason for the vindictive prosecution, but complains that merely being the sole surviving son of Donald Trump’s opponent is not a constitutionally protected right.

The defendant does not attempt to show causal linkage between a legal right exercised by him and his prosecution. In his motion, the defendant appears generally to identify one legal right that he claims he exercised which he alleges caused his indictment: “engaging in constitutionally protected speech and political activity.” ECF 63 at 49. But he fails to identify with any specificity what his constitutionally protected speech or his political activity was. For example, he does not contend that he made a public political statement, nor does he identify which statement caused prosecutors to have animus. His failure to identify facts that support any actual legal right that he exercised should prevent this court from moving forward to even analyze his vindictive prosecution claim because no court has recognized a derivative vindictive prosecution claim based on a family member’s exercise of rights. [emphasis original]

Hines pretty much lies about how much Weiss ratcheted up the potential punishment against Hunter, which is the proof that prosecutors took vindictive action against Hunter for exercising his rights.

What Hines does not do — not in the least — is address Lowell’s map of how, as political pressure from Republicans ratcheted up, David Weiss reneged on the specific terms in a plea agreement. The latest communication from the ones submitted to the record that he cites was dated May 23, 2023, before the political pressure started ratcheting up.

For example, in an email to defense counsel dated May 18, 2023, about “a potential nontrial resolution,” Document 60-6 at p. 2, the AUSA stated, “As I said during our call, the below list is preliminary in nature and subject to change. We have not discussed or obtained approval for these terms, but are presenting them in an attempt to advance our discussions about a potential non-trial resolution . . .” The following week, in an email to defense counsel dated May 23, 2023, Document 60-9 at p. 3, the AUSA stated, “As we indicated in our emails and discussions we did not have approval for a pre-trial diversion agreement. As you know, that authority rests with the US Attorney who ultimately did not approve continued discussions for diversion related to the tax charges.” [emphasis original]

Hines ignores that, according to Chris Clark’s declaration and a great deal of back-up submitted with it, David Weiss was personally involved in language crafted two weeks after that May 23 email.

Later that afternoon, on June 6, 2023, I spoke directly with U.S. Attorney Weiss. During that call, I conveyed to U.S. Attorney Weiss that the Agreement’s immunity provision must ensure Mr. Biden that there would be finality and closure of this investigation, as I had conveyed repeatedly to AUSA Wolf during our negotiations. I further conveyed to U.S. Attorney Weiss that this provision was a deal-breaker. I noted that U.S. Attorney Weiss had changed the deal several times heretofore, and that I simply could not have this issue be yet another one which Mr. Biden had to compromise. The U.S. Attorney asked me what the problem was with the proposed language, and I explained that the immunity provision must protect Mr. Biden from any future prosecution by a new U.S. Attorney in a different administration. The U.S. Attorney considered the proposal and stated that he would get back to me promptly.

29. Later that same evening on June 6, 2023, at or around 5:47 PM EST, AUSA Wolf emailed me proposed language for the immunity provision that read: “How about this- The United States agrees not to criminally prosecute Biden, outside of the terms of this Agreement, for any federal crimes encompassed by the attached Statement of Facts (Attachment A) and the Statement of Facts attached as Exhibit 1 to the Memorandum of Plea Agreement filed this same day.” (Emphasis in original.) After speaking with Mr. Biden, I responded to AUSA Wolf that the language she sent me “works” and is suitable for Mr. Biden as well, at which point the Parties had a deal. A true and correct and correct copy of AUSA Wolf’s June 6, 2023, email to Chris Clark is attached hereto as Exhibit K.

30. On June 7, 2023, AUSA Wolf emailed me a revised draft of the Diversion Agreement that incorporated the language she had proposed in her June 6 email to me. In that draft, the revised Paragraph 15 provided that “The United States agrees not to criminally prosecute Biden, outside of the terms of this Agreement, for any federal crimes encompassed by the attached Statement of Facts (Attachment A) and the Statement of Facts attached as Exhibit 1 to the Memorandum of Plea Agreement filed this same day.” (Emphasis added.) A true and correct copy of AUSA Wolf’s June 7, 2023, email and redlined Diversion Agreement to Chris Clark is attached hereto as Exhibit L. [emphasis original]

That is, as late as June 6 — the day before that the pressure on Weiss started to publicly ratchet up — David Weiss had personally sanctioned a misdemeanor plea with a gun diversion. That was long after, importantly, the agreement to treat the gun charges via diversion.

That is, Derek Hines simply doesn’t address the abundant evidence that Weiss reneged on a commitment he had personally committed to after coming under political pressure.

As I have laid out, normally these kinds of vindictive prosecution claims are almost as easy to rebut as selective prosecution claims. I described what you might expect in a case arguing that a prosecutor decided to ratchet up charges in response to improper influence: Some kind of language addressing what changed to justify ratcheting up the charges.

You can see how this works in the case of Hatchet Speed, based on facts — involving felony gun charges in one district and the addition of a felony charge to a misdemeanor in another — not dissimilar from Hunter’s case. On January 6, Speed was an NRO contractor with TS/SCI clearance and a Naval reservist still training at Andrews Air Force Base. He had ties to the Proud Boys and expressed a fondness for Hitler. He went on a $50,000 weapon buying spree after January 6, including devices that — prosecutors successfully argued in a second trial — qualified as silencers under federal law. He was charged for unregistered silencers in EDVA and, at first, misdemeanor trespassing charges for his actions on January 6. Between the time his first EDVA trial ended in mistrial and a guilty verdict in his retrial, DOJ added a felony obstruction charge in DC, which his excellent FPD attorneys argued was retaliation for the mistrial. But DOJ responded with an explanation of the process leading to the addition of the felony obstruction charge: they added a second prosecutor, got better at prosecuting obstruction for January 6, found some more damning video of Speed at the Capitol, and came to recognize how Speed’s comments about the attack would prove the corrupt intent required for obstruction charges. They were pretty honest that they regarded Speed as a dangerous dude that they wanted to put away, too.

The same process might well happen if Lowell files a vindictive prosecution claim. Under Goodwin, Weiss might have to do little more than say there was a societal interest in jailing Hunter Biden to affirm the import of the gun laws his father continues to champion.

Normally, prosecutors simply point to some evidence obtained after an initial prosecution decision that changed prosecutors mind about charging.

But Hines doesn’t assert to have any of that in this filing!! Not even the argument I expected — that it’s important that Joe Biden’s kid be subject to the same gun laws that his father champions with everyone else.

What he has (as noted by the timeline below) are a series of dates — including for the discovery of the cocaine residue in the pouch — that Hines obscures.

Rather than a specific explanation of what changed to merit the three gun felonies instead of a diversion, there’s this patently dishonest claim about when the prosecution got evidence in this case.

First, the defendant claims, “DOJ obtained the facts underlying this case years ago and was satisfied the case did not warrant prosecution.” ECF 63 at 50. This is inaccurate. Many of the incriminating facts were discovered years after the conduct when prosecutors had received the defendant’s Apple messages and when the defendant released his incriminating book. There is no evidence that the DOJ decided that this case did not warrant prosecution “years ago.”

The thing about investigations into events that happened five years ago is that prosecutors can have obtained evidence “years ago” that they nevertheless obtained “years after” the alleged crime. Hines is playing word games: The indictment relies heavily on Hunter’s 272-page book, which had been out over two years before David Weiss personally blessed a diversion for the charges.

What prosecutors don’t say — what they would have to say to explain how new evidence led them to change their minds about charging — is that they obtained that evidence between the day David Weiss blessed a diversion agreement — well before June 6 — and the date he decided to charge felonies that Hines argues, while reserving the right to ask for a bunch of enhancements, expose Hunter to 15-21 months’ imprisonment.

Instead, Derek Hines hides what date prosecutors obtained that coke residue evidence. If I’m right that the warrant to search Hunter’s iCloud content was obtained in December — after indicting this crime — then it would be the opposite of proof (again, I’ve asked Weiss’ office for clarity on this point, because I can’t believe they’d only obtain that warrant after indicting). But that is consistent with the discovery motion that described the first batch of discovery only amounted to 350 pages of evidence (which, if it included the whole book would only include 78 additional pages of evidence).

On October 12, 2023, the government provided to the defendant a production of materials consisting of over 350 pages of documents as well as additional electronic evidence from the defendant’s Apple iCloud account and a copy of data from the defendant’s laptop. This production included search warrants related to evidence the government may use in its case-inchief in the gun case, statements of the defendant including his admissions that he was addicted to crack cocaine and possessed a firearm in 2018, and law enforcement reports related to the gun investigation.

More importantly is what this motion doesn’t say. First of all, in spite of falsely treating Hunter’s false statement as if it were a straw purchase to claim an aggravating factor, it provides zero evidence that Hunter had the intent of deceiving on that form. It provides evidence, instead, that Hunter was paranoid and trying to find a way to protect himself and totally out of his mind, the opposite of what you need to prove a willful lie.

Worse still, what the motion literally shows is the reverse of what Hines’ dick-wag in the paragraph all the dick pic sniffers have picked up on. Yes, “to be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun.” That impressed the hell out of the dick pic sniffers. But to be clearer, investigators literally didn’t look for drug residue on the gun until five years, possibly longer, after law enforcement seized the gun. 

Even if that drug residue had been found between July 26 and September 14, it’d still be proof that prosecutors never took basic steps towards charging gun crimes until after Republicans brought their heat. If it happened before June 20 in 2023, it’d be even further proof that that Devlin Barrett story did what it was designed to do: to politicize this case. If it happened in December, then it’s a sign of real negligence and dishonesty.

Whatever it is, it proved more useful for impressing the dick pic sniffers than it will in defeating Hunter’s vindictive prosecution claim.

Update: Weiss’ spox declines to comment beyond the court filings.

Update: Fixed the grammar in vindictive action.

Timeline

October 2018: The gun, ammunition, and speed loader were placed in evidence

August 2019: The tax and foreign influence peddling iCloud warrant Weiss claims to be relying on obtained

December 2019: When Weiss obtained the laptop, but he doesn’t provide the exact date or discuss the provenance problems of it

August 2020: An iCloud warrant, probably the fruit of the laptop and almost definitely also limited to tax and influence peddling crimes, that Weiss mentions in a footnote but doesn’t acknowledge in the text

April 6, 2021: Publication date of Hunter’s book, which specific date Weiss does not include in the filing.

March 2022: Prosecutors first inform Chris Clark they are considering gun charges.

October 6, 2022: Politicized leak to Devlin Barrett designed to pressure David Weiss into charging gun charges.

October 31, 2022: Chris Clark notes that prosecutors didn’t tell him of potential gun crimes until March 2022.

Since December 2020, nearly all of our meetings, phone calls, and correspondence with your Office have related to the Government’s investigation of Mr. Biden for possible tax offenses. It was not until a phone call in March 2022—over a year into our cooperative dialogue—that your Office disclosed a potential investigation of Mr. Biden for possible firearms offenses (the “Firearm Investigation”).

September 14, 2023: Weiss obtains gun indictment just before speedy trial clock expires.

ND: Prosecutors obtain a warrant, listed as 23-507M, to “to search the defendant’s electronic evidence for evidence of federal firearms violations and to seize such data.” The filing does not provide a date for this warrant, but 23-mj-504 was an arrest warrant obtained on November 30 and 23-mj-508 was an arrest warrant obtained on December 4, 2023. I have asked Weiss’ office for clarification on whether this warrant could possibly have been obtained in December, almost three months after the indictment.

ND: Sometime in 2023, date not given, but by description after the gun-related warrant, prosecutors access the gun that has been in storage for over 5 years and “notice” it has cocaine residue on it, which is when they first sent it for FBI analysis.

David Weiss Buries Bill Barr Right Alongside Tony Bobulinski

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For a second time, David Weiss’ Special Counsel team has buried an inconvenient (some)body to avoid accounting for the politicization of the investigation they claim is not political.

This time, it’s Bill Barr.

Across three responses pertaining to political influence submitted yesterday — request for discovery, immunity through diversion agreement, and selective and vindictive prosecution — the prosecutors used a variety of tactics to simply avoid dealing with inconvenient evidence.

In the discovery response, after describing discovery production to date — 500,000 pages of which came on January 9 — Derek Hines argued that under Armstrong, Hunter Biden hadn’t reached the threshold for discovery, primarily addressing selective prosecution rather than vindictive (as I’ll show, Hines ignores much of Hunter’s vindictive prosecution argument). In claiming there’s no evidence to support discovery, his discovery response doesn’t address a single piece of evidence that Hunter showed to support his argument. Instead, it paraphrases Hunter’s two discovery requests (one, two) this way:

  • Emails, documents, and information reflecting deliberative processes and decision-making of DOJ concerning the investigation and its decision to bring charges against the defendant. ECF 65 at ¶¶ E, G
  • Emails, documents, and information concerning communications with Congress and “any person at the U.S. Department of Justice” “concerning the investigation or prosecution of Mr. Biden, including the decision to bring any particular charges.” ECF 65 at ¶ H
  • “All documents and records reflecting communications from January 20, 2017 to the present (the “Relevant Time Period”) to, from, between, or among Donald J. Trump, William P. Barr, Geoffrey Berman, Scott W. Brady, Richard Donoghue, or Jeffrey A. Rosen relating to or discussing any formal or informal investigation or prosecution of Hunter Biden, or a request thereof” ECF 66 at ¶ 1
  • “All documents and records reflecting communications from the Relevant Time Period to, from, between, or among Donald J. Trump, William P. Barr, Geoffrey Berman, Scott W. Brady, Richard Donoghue, or Jeffrey A. Rosen and any Executive Branch official, political appointee, Department of Justice official, government agency, government official or staff person, cabinet member, or attorney for President Trump (personal or other) discussing or concerning Hunter Biden.” ECF 66 at ¶ 2

The paraphrase ignores items in Hunter’s first request pertaining to John Paul Mac Isaac (yesterday’s filings reference the laptop without describing its provenance or whether and how follow-on warrants relied on it), to disciplinary investigations, leak investigations, and other communication with the press (one of which Hines specifically relies on in his responses), as well as draft 302s and FD-1023s like the one recording an unreliable Tony Bobulinski interview made after being hosted by Donald Trump (which, as I noted, Weiss distorted the facts to exclude from the tax indictment, just as he distorts the facts regarding Barr’s involvement) or an informant report obtained via a dedicated channel for Rudy Giuliani’s dirt.

That is, Hines simply ignores a number of items in Hunter’s request that prove Trump’s personal and ongoing tampering in this investigation.

The discovery response likewise ignores Hunter’s request for subpoenas for materials in the possession of Trump and others, including Barr, which was cited in Hunter’s own discovery motion, even though Hines dealt with comments Trump made on Truth Social this way, in his selective and vindictive response:

The next statements by Trump cited by the defendant in support of his argument (ECF 63 at 31) occurred in 2023, now on a website called “Truth Social.” After the defendant filed his motion, undersigned counsel have tried to gain access to the website to verify the authenticity of the “Truth Social” messages cited by the defendant, but the site apparently is not functional:

Accordingly, while the government has not verified the accuracy of the messages or been able to assess any surrounding context that the defendant may have omitted, it is still clear that these supposed messages do not advance the defendant’s claim.

“Let me subpoena all the threats made by Donald Trump on his social media site,” Hunter asked. And after Leo Wise claimed that’s not necessary, Hines professed to be utterly incompetent to be able to find those threats, including at least one targeting David Weiss personally, published publicly. That, even though other parts of DOJ have proven perfectly capable of accessing Truth Social — for example, after Taylor Taranto used the address for Barack Obama that Trump posted there to start stalking the Kalorama neighborhood of Trump’s predecessor. DOJ knows how to find threats Trump elicits on Truth Social, but poor Derek Hines claims he doesn’t have any way of doing that.

You know how you might get those posts, Derek Hines? A subpoena.

But it is in Bill Barr’s role where this response is most telling (particularly given Hines’ paraphrase ignoring FD-1023s).

Here’s how, in the selective and vindictive response, he addressed Hunter’s request for information from Bill Barr.

Even the contents of most of the tweets cited by the defendant contradict his claim that he is being selectively and vindictively prosecuted. For example, according to the defendant, on December 12, 2020, former President Trump complained that then-Attorney General Barr did not “reveal the truth” to the public before the election about Hunter Biden. ECF 63 at 29. If the DOJ was acting to pursue a political agenda, wouldn’t DOJ have done the opposite? The defendant says President Trump tweeted, “I have NOTHING to do with the potential prosecution of Hunter Biden, or the Biden family. . . ” Id. That claim of non-involvement does not support his claim. According to the defendant, in his book, Attorney General Barr stated he was asked by President Trump about the investigation of Hunter Biden, and Attorney General Barr refused to tell him about it. Id. at 30. This withholding of information does not support his argument.

And here’s how Hines dodged any discussion of the Deputy Attorney General’s role in channeling Russian disinformation — as well as an FD-1023 obtained via a dedicated channel from Trump’s personal lawyer — into the investigation of the son of Trump’s campaign opponent.

In this same section of his brief, the defendant cites testimony of an IRS employee who stated that DOJ made the decision not to take overt investigative steps that could influence the 2020 election. Id. The problematic conduct that the defendant complains of is that the Deputy Attorney General’s office during the Trump Administration was aware of and involved in some specific investigatory decisions in the most banal fashion possible—by waiting to take specific investigative steps at certain times out of caution so that that investigation would not influence a Presidential election. If the defendant’s vindictiveness allegations were true, wouldn’t DOJ prosecutors have done the opposite and permitted investigators to take overt steps that could have influenced the election? These claims show only that career DOJ prosecutors and DOJ leadership acted appropriately when investigating the son of a candidate for President. Moreover, against this backdrop, U.S. Attorney Weiss was then asked to remain U.S. Attorney during the Biden Administration, which further underscores the lack of discriminatory intent.

As Wise did in the filing claiming to need no subpoena, Hines did here: both completely ignored that Hunter has pointed to official records, which are in no way deliberative, showing that months after Donald Trump asked Volodymyr Zelenskyy to provide campaign dirt to Rudy Giuliani and Bill Barr, days after (per Chuck Grassley) shutting down an investigation into Mykola Zlochevsky, the former Attorney General set up a channel dedicated to ingesting dirt from Rudy, including from Zlochevsky and known agents of Russia, to be laundered into the investigation of Hunter Biden.

That response ignores several aspects — either implicit or explicit — of Hunter’s request:

  • Joseph Ziegler initially claimed (he subsequently backed off this claim) that Bill Barr personally decided to put the investigation in Delaware, an appropriate venue to investigate Joe Biden, but not for Hunter’s suspected tax crimes
  • Bill Barr set up a back channel to receive Rudy Giuliani’s dirt targeting Hunter and Joe Biden, including dirt obtained from Mykola Zlochevsky and known Russian agent Andrii Derkach
  • Days after Trump harangued Bill Barr personally (described in his book as a response to the initial NY Post story published on October 14), Richard Donoghue ordered Weiss’ team to accept a briefing on the FD-1023 (which happened on October 23 — the same day Bobulinski met with the FBI)
  • Bill Barr told Margot Cleveland, for a story published just as David Weiss started reneging on a plea deal in June, that he was personally involved in sharing the FD-1023 with Weiss’ office

And if Weiss responded to Hunter’s request for “communications with Congress,” he would have to provide the following:

  • Discussions Barr had with Lindsey Graham about the dedicated channel he was setting up to target Hunter Biden
  • The correspondence via which DOJ told Jerry Nadler about the dedicated channel for Rudy’s dirt
  • The July 10 letter from Weiss to Lindsey Graham stating that the FD-1023 produced by that dedicated channel was still being investigated, crucial evidence of what I called the FARA headfake inventing a reason to reopen the investigation
  • Chuck Grassley’s October 23 letter to Merrick Garland describing that days before Barr set up that dedicated channel and around the time when Zlochevsky made unprecedented claims of having bribed Joe Biden, Bill Barr’s DOJ shut down a corruption investigation whence the FD-1023 would be reverse engineered via Barr’s dedicated channel
  • Scott Brady’s testimony describing:
    • The dedicated channel to launder dirt into the Hunter Biden investigation involved 5 prosecutors in Brady’s office (including him), plus some number of FBI people
    • Between January and October 2020, Brady spoke to Weiss every four to six weeks about this dedicated channel
    • Brady demanded — and after some “colorful” language with Weiss, got — interrogatories regarding the scope of Weiss’ investigation
    • In his initial explanation, Brady said his team found that lead via asking the FBI to search on “Hunter Biden” and “Burisma,” precisely the request Trump had made of Volodymyr Zlochevsky
    • The reinterview of the Zlochevsky informant came at Brady’s direction
    • Brady’s claimed vetting of the Zlochevsky lead included checking travel records (the dates of which were not included on the FD-1023) but did not include comparing Zlochevsky’s claims against the materials from impeachment or even public reporting that conflicted with it
    • He “reminded” Weiss of the obligation to investigate leads
    • He provided a report to Donoghue in September 2020 that would in no way be deliberative
    • He got Donoghue to intervene when Weiss’ team showed reluctance to accept his laundered dirt
    • Brady personally kept Bill Barr informed of his efforts
  • David Weiss’ testimony describing:
    • He never spoke with Joe Biden about remaining on as US Attorney, has not been supervised by any political appointee since 2022, and has never once spoken to his boss, Lisa Monaco
    • He did speak with Bill Barr about remaining on as US Attorney
    • He has never had direct communication with Merrick Garland save the written communication in which he asked to be made Special Counsel
    • The discussion he had with LA US Attorney Martin Estrada goes to the merits of the case that Estrada said would not be worth charging that Weiss has since charged
    • He always intended to continue the investigation into Hunter, a claim that materially conflicts with something that Chris Clark says Weiss’ First AUSA told him
    • He believes Leslie Wolf, whom he removed from the Hunter Biden team, is a person of integrity
    • The information laundered through Brady was still ongoing as of November 7
    • His office has been targeted by threats and harassment — and he himself raised concerns about intimidation
    • He still remembers Gary Shapley’s body language in response to Weiss’ comment about the merits of the case
  • Thomas Sobocinski’s testimony describing:
    • After Gary Shapley’s claims went public, threats to personnel on the team “absolutely increased”
    • He “definitely” had discussions with David Weiss about how Shapley’s claims would affect the case
    • After Shapley’s claims, the children of people on the team started getting followed
    • Leslie Wolf has concerns for her safety
  • Martin Estrada’s description of three reports he received, which convinced him it was not worth dedicating resources to prosecuting Hunter Biden for tax crimes in Los Angeles

In short, Hines simply refuses to deal with the evidence — some laid out explicitly in Hunter’s filing — that would substantiate how Bill Barr went to great lengths to let Trump’s personal attorney launder dirt into this investigation, and then continued to politicize this investigation during the period when Weiss’ team was subjected to increased threats.

The record already shows that Trump demanded an investigation, DOJ set one up in the way most likely to implicate Joe as opposed to Hunter, in the wake of pressure from Trump and during the campaign season, DOJ ordered Weiss to accept an informant report reflecting a suspect relationship between Zlochevsky and Trump’s attorney, and that back channel continues to be one of the ways Republicans have provably pressured David Weiss to prosecute Hunter more harshly, after which pressure Weiss did just that.

But by refusing to address the substance of the evidence Hunter laid out showing this investigation was politicized, Hines simply buried all that.

David Weiss’ Responses to Motions to Dismiss

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David Weiss has responded to Hunter’s motions to dismiss. These will definitely be covered by the frothy right.

Nowhere in these filings do David Weiss’ AUSA deny he lied to Congress.

As I have noted, Chris Clark alleges that Weiss’ First AUSA told him on June 19 there was no ongoing investigation. David Weiss told Congress something completely different.

In these filings, Weiss simply ignores the evidence that Weiss reneged on a plea deal in the context of their treatment of the diversion. The two sides are both cherry picking language about whether the diversion went into effect. But you can’t discuss them except in context of Weiss reneging on a signed plea deal.

And in the context of that, Weiss simply dismisses the pressure — much less the threats — from Congress. That goes to the vindictive prosecution claim.