All of this is air tight. It has to be. That’s why it’s taking so long. NYC, Georgia, DC. Some ass hanging the jury is a concern. But it can be re-tried. A problem is Trump pardoning himself if he or a republican gets elected.
I don’t trust SCOTUS anymore. No one should.
If some other Republican wins, why bother pardoning Trump? If I’m President Haley, I might just forget to do it . That old orange goblin is an agent of chaos. I’d let him rot in jail or suffer from all the lawsuits people choose to send at him.
Pardoning Trump is a sure way to get overwhelming support for your office from the MAGAts. At least for as long as this hypothetical Republican president continues to do whatever the MAGAts want. Even though Trump is their cult leader, even he is afraid to cross them.
Hell, just take a page from that jackass’s playbook. Promise to do it at some future date. As the deadline approaches, waffle some nonsense about having the DOJ looking into it but it’s taking so long because of Obama and Biden weaponizing the Deep State. Just keep kicking that fat can down the road until you’ve completed your term of office.
I don’t want to derail or hijack the thread either, but I just wanted to say that sounds like a wonderful evening.
May you have other victories to toast (like last night’s…hope you’re not too hung over!).
I don’t trust the SCOTUS either, but you should remember that they aren’t Trump’s court, they are McConnell’s, and unlike Republican members of congress they don’t have to worry about primaries so they have no reason to suck up to him. So far they have shown no particular interest in supporting Trump’s election stealing shenanigans they don’t want to live in a dictatorship run by a buffoon, their goal is a plutocracy with Jim Crow seasoning. I think they would just as soon see him locked up so that he doesn’t drag the Republican party down with him.
So, I’m assuming Garland will be prosecuting everyone who violates this statute?
It’s 99/44-100% bullshit, but technically Hunter Biden did violate the statute. And now that it’s been handed down it pretty much has to go through the system — if Garland or Joe Biden even looked like they were trying to interfere the screeching from the RW would be heard outside the solar system.
I would have to guess it’s somewhat of a common offense to possess a handgun while being an addict. I would guess in the typical case, the person being charged has many other offenses they are being charged with at the same time. The gun+drug charge is just something being tacked on to a long list of other charges. I would think this case is unusual in that his only indictment is on the gun+drug charge. Has there been any mention of what a typical sentence is in cases which are similar to Hunter’s, where it’s just this gun charge and nothing else?
I found this press release from a few years ago talking about people being charged solely for possessing a firearm while using illegal drugs:
It was a deterrence program to keep guns out of the hands of drug users. One guy was sentenced to over 17 years, but as stated, “This defendant has a long criminal history of felony convictions, and was on parole when he was found in possession of firearms and illegal narcotics. Nash has devoted his adult life to a career of repeated criminal conduct, and that prior history has finally caught up with him.” That’s different from a person like Hunter who has a clean criminal record up to this point.
Other sentences I see are 21 months and 40 months. Again, these are people convicted solely for being in possession of a gun and being an unlawful drug user.
A lot of these people serving long sentences were on parole or had a history of criminal behavior. So I wouldn’t expect Hunter to face sentences like they did.
I have zero opinions about Hunter Biden, and tend to see him as a completely separate adult human from Joe Biden (i.e., the actions of one do not affect my opinion of the other). I do not vote Republican or sympathize with them; I am very anti-gun but pro legalization of drugs and social welfare for drug addicts (and everyone, really).
That said, isn’t this exactly the sort of thing mainstream left-leaning gun control advocates have been pressing for, statutes like this and their enforcement? Why isn’t this a reasonable case to prosecute?
Same. I don’t feel the need to defend him. He is not a reflection on his father. That’s why Republican attempts to smear Joe Biden with the mistakes that Hunter made have largely failed, and why they have to invent some crazy story about damning evidence on a laptop and secret deals (with no evidence).
If he’s being made an example and being treated worse than someone else in his situation because of who his father is, that doesn’t sound like justice to me. Whether it’s the right trying to do this as a way to attack Joe, or the left trying to make it look like they’re being “fair” and overcompensating in the process, if he’s being subjected to prosecution that someone else wouldn’t go through, it doesn’t seem right.
It’s like the opposite of Donald Trump, where it looks like he is being treated with kid gloves and given concession after concession because of who he is, despite the seriousness of his crimes and the overwhelming evidence against him.
Because, especially in light of the problems with opioids and meth in the US, it’s horrible public policy search gun records in order to to slap felony charges on people that admit to an addiction as part of a rehabilitation program.
Not to mention that Hunter Biden only possessed the gun for 11 days and there’s no evidence that he ever loaded it, much less used it.
As long as it’s still cool to be a drunk gun owner, then pew pew, murica!
Yes, but that makes it a bad law; the prosecution thereof is a separate issue. Anyway, I appreciate your and Atamasama’s responses—quite helpful.
Because it is arguably unconstitutional to prosecute somebody for merely being an addict.
You can prosecute somebody for possessing drugs, or selling them, or using them. But to just be addicted to them? That shouldn’t be a criminal offense.
Wait, is that what happened? I thought the charge was possessing guns.
The first two charges against Biden are for lying on a form when purchasing a gun. He stated on the form that he was not addicted to or using illegal drugs at the time. Although he has publicly admitted that he was addicted to crack cocaine it is another matter altogether for the government to prove he was actually using and addicted to drugs on the day he signed the form.
The third charge was for illegal possession of the gun for 11 days, illegal they say because he lied on the form.
Illegal because he was a user of illegal drugs when he possessed the gun.
Denying guns to people addicted to drugs sounds like a valid reason since the drugs which are associated with addiction often bring on unpredictable behavior changes. It doesn’t sounds like a made up reason so that the state has a backdoor path to go after addicts (like the “illegal drug tax stamps” law was).
I’m generally in favor of more and more restrictions and limitations on gun ownership anyway. Let’s limit it to people with credit scores over 800. Let’s limit it to people who have college degrees. etc etc. The harder it is to get a gun, the fewer guns will be in the public.
Unfortunately there will be some blow back to the Dems because of this case, but I think the law is a good law to have. I think the Dems could actually help themselves if they treated this as a typical case of someone getting a gun that shouldn’t have. Say that owning a gun is something very serious and that someone under the influence of drugs shouldn’t be allowed to own one. That might contribute to Hunter getting a longer sentence, but in the long run, it will help support their platform to put limits on gun ownership. If they downplay this as no big deal that he got a gun after lying and being on drugs, it undermines their platform.