With Hunter Biden found guilty, expect Democrats to use that verdict against Trump
By Andrea Widburg
The two cases and their two outcomes are not the same. Anything Democrats say to the contrary is a lie. Hunter Biden received due process of the law; Trump received the full Soviet treatment.
A short time ago, the jury returned its verdict in the Hunter Biden trial: Guilty on all counts. What we can expect now is that Democrats will say that the guilty verdict proves justice is alive in America, so Trump supporters need to stop complaining that he was railroaded in a politically driven show trial. That’s not true. There is no comparison between Hunter’s blatant violation of an explicit law and the cooked-up charges brought against Donald Trump.
Here’s the Daily Mail:
Hunter Biden has been found guilty of three felonies today in his Delaware gun crimes trial.
The Wilmington, Delaware jury unanimously voted to convict Joe Biden ’s son of two counts of lying on a federal form to buy a gun, and one count of possessing the firearm while abusing drugs.
[snip]
He will now await Judge Maryellen Noreika to decide on a sentence for the crimes, which could be as high as 25 years in prison and a $250,000 fine – though the typical sentence is much lower.
Before going further, let me remind you how the indictment describes the federal form Biden lied on:
Question 11.e. of the Form 4473 requires that the prospective purchaser certify truthfully that he or she is not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance. In the certification section of the Form 4473, the actual buyer must certify that his or her answers to the questions on the form are “true, correct, and complete.” The actual buyer must also acknowledge by his or her signature that “I understand that a person who answers ‘yes’ to [Question ll.e j is prohibited from purchasing or receiving a firearm" and "making any false oral or written statement...is a crime punishable as a felony under Federal law, and may also violate State and/or local law.”
The evidence was overwhelming that Hunter was both a user of and addicted to illegal drugs at the very moment he answered “no” to that question. As a separate matter, one of the evidentiary items used against him was the laptop from Hell.
The fact that the FBI knew the laptop was real and allowed everyone, from Joe Biden on down—and Biden also knew it was real, of course—to lie during the 2020 campaign about the laptop being a Russian fake means that there must be some serious indictments for election fraud moving forward. But back to the main point...
Hunter’s defense was that, as an addict, he didn’t know what he was doing. However, intent is not a recognized defense to the charges against him, just as you can’t avoid drunk driving charges by claiming you didn’t know you were drunk.
On the facts before them, the jury concluded as follows:
For Count One, the jurors agreed that Hunter made “a false statement in connection with the acquisition of a firearm.” For Count Two, they agreed that Hunter made “a false statement with respect to information required to be kept in records.” And for Count Three, they agreed that Hunter was in “possession of a firearm” despite being a person “who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance.”
The jurors really had no other option. They could have found Hunter innocent only if they had engaged in blatant nullification. Even if the jurors weren’t models of rectitude (and we’ll assume that they were), it would have been hard for them to justify nullifying those indisputable and undisputed facts.
We know that the Democrats and other leftists will now use the verdict to “prove” that Trump’s trial was above board. If the president’s son can be found guilty of a crime carrying a prison sentence varying from 1 year to 25 years, then a former president can be found guilty, too. But the cases are very different.
As noted, Hunter was found guilty of a cut-and-dried crime, where his guilt was impossible to deny, and his only defense was that he was so messed up on drugs he didn’t even realize he was lying about drug use.
Meanwhile, Trump was charged with a bookkeeping classification he didn’t make himself, which is, at best, a time-barred misdemeanor. However, Bragg elevated it to a felony by claiming that the bookkeeping “lie” was intended to hide a felony. At the indictment level, contrary to the Sixth Amendment requirement that defendants know the charges against them, Alvin Bragg failed to identify the alleged underlying felony.
Only near the end of the trial did Bragg reveal the alleged felony...or, rather, three possible alleged felonies. One was that Trump violated a federal campaign law that the feds refused to bring; the second was that Trump committed tax fraud in a way that actually increased Michael Cohen’s taxes; and the third was that Trump, by falsifying records, feloniously mischaracterized other records.
The charges made no sense whatsoever, of course. They involved matters in which New York has no jurisdiction, tax matters that occurred after the election (so they couldn’t have constituted campaign fraud), and non-existent injuries to the public. Additionally, Judge Merchan gave the worst jury instruction in American history when he told the jurors that the alleged underlying felonies were a grab bag and that, as long as all agreed that something bad happened, it didn’t matter if they were unanimous in agreeing about which bad thing happened.
As the Supreme Court said in Richardson v. United States, “this Court has indicated that the Constitution itself limits a State's power to define crimes in ways that would permit juries to convict while disagreeing about means, at least where that definition risks serious unfairness and lacks support in history or tradition.” It quoted Justice Scalia: “We would not permit...an indictment charging that the defendant assaulted either X on Tuesday or Y on Wednesday...”
On the way to the verdict, Merchan allowed the defective indictment; seated an anti-Trump jury; violated Trump’s First Amendment rights; made Wednesday the court day off, which made it hard for pro-Trump Orthodox Jews to serve lest Friday’s proceedings run into the Sabbath and precluded Trump’s easily flying to weekend campaign activities; refused factual testimony about the FEC’s approach to the regulation Trump was alleged to have violated; aggressively limited a witness who would have testified to Michael Cohen’s lies; and generally did everything he could to ensure Trump’s conviction.
The two cases and their two outcomes are not the same. Anything Democrats say to the contrary is a lie. Hunter Biden received due process of the law; Trump received the full Soviet treatment. Help Trump (and America) by donating here.
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