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Tag: Hunter Biden
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House Republicans subpoena Hunter and James Biden
House Republicans subpoena Hunter and James Biden – CBS News
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Joe Biden’s impeachment is looking more likely
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It is “very likely” that President Biden has committed impeachable offenses, according to Speaker Mike Johnson, who was elected to the office on Wednesday after three weeks of Republican turmoil.
In September, then-Speaker Kevin McCarthy launched a formal impeachment inquiry into Biden. It focused on whether the president was ever influenced by the business dealings of his son Hunter Biden, potentially setting the stage for an impeachment trial. McCarthy said the president faced “allegations of abuse of power, obstruction and corruption,” warranting further investigation.
Biden has consistently denied any wrongdoing, and White House spokesperson Ian Sams said: “House Republicans have been investigating the president for nine months, and they’ve turned up no evidence of wrongdoing. His own GOP members have said so.”
Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity, in his first broadcast interview since becoming speaker, Johnson said that the evidence suggested impeachable offenses had been committed, but he added that he will follow due process.
Johnson said: “The reason we shifted to the impeachment inquiry stage on the president himself was because if, in fact, all the evidence leads to where we believe it will, that’s very likely impeachable offenses.
“That’s listed as a cause for impeachment in the constitution; bribery and other crimes and misdemeanours. Bribery’s listed there, and it looks and smells a lot like that. We’re going to follow the truth wherever it leads. We’re going to engage in due process because, again, we’re the rule of law party,” he said.
“I know people are getting anxious and they’re getting restless and they just want somebody to be impeached, but we don’t do that like the other team. We have to base it on the evidence,” added Johnson.
Newsweek has approached the White House press office for comment via email.
Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican representative who introduced the motion to vacate that saw McCarthy become the first speaker in U.S. history to be removed from office, had described the impeachment inquiry as a “failure theater.”
Speaking to Politico, he said: “I don’t believe that the impeachment effort under Kevin McCarthy was intended to convict Joe Biden as much as it was to save Kevin McCarthy.”
However, Gaetz added that he had greater confidence about the impeachment process under Johnson. He said that the new speaker will “approach this like a lawyer” rather than “a desperate person trying to cling to power.”
Joe Biden holds a press conference in the Rose Garden at the White House on October 25, 2023 in Washington, DC. It is “very likely” the president has committed impeachable offences, according to Speaker Mike Johnson, who took office this week.
Drew Angerer/GETTY
On October 20, Republican House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer shared an image of a $200,000 check sent to Joe Biden by his brother James Biden in 2018.
Comer said that James Biden had received “shady” loans totaling $600,000 from a hospital firm. They were based on claims that his family name could help secure a “large investment from the Middle East.”
However, on X, formerly Twitter, Sams posted that the money was clearly marked as a loan repayment.
The White House oversight and investigations spokesperson wrote: “Jamie Comer is pretty desperate to try to distract from Republicans’ speaker mess.
“It’s a loan repayment from when President Biden loaned his brother money. When he was out of office in 2018, no less. It’s right there on the check!” Sams added.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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U.S. attorney for Central California told Congress David Weiss had full authority to charge Hunter Biden in the state
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U.S. Attorney for Central California E. Martin Estrada told Congress that the prosecutor leading the probe into Hunter Biden had full authority to pursue criminal tax charges in California against the president’s son, but declined any partnership with his office, according to records reviewed by CBS News that have not been publicly released.
Estrada’s closed-door testimony partially contradicts claims made by IRS whistleblower and supervisory special agent Gary Shapley that David Weiss, the U.S. attorney for Delaware who has since been named special counsel in the Hunter Biden investigation, had stated in an October 2022 meeting that he was “not the deciding person” to bring charges in the case.
“My understanding was that Mr. Weiss had been doing this investigation for several years, was leading the investigation, and would bring charges if he believed they were appropriate,” Estrada told the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee, according to the transcript of the closed-door interview.
Two FBI officials assigned to the Hunter Biden investigation also told the committee earlier this year that they did not recall Weiss telling investigators he did not have authority to push the case forward himself.
Referencing limited resources, Estrada, who was appointed by President Biden to be one of California’s U.S. attorneys, said he declined requests made by Weiss, to partner with his office as co-counsel in the prosecution. But he did offer administrative resources and office space to Weiss’ staff.
A spokesperson for the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware declined to comment.
As the Republican-led congressional investigations into Hunter Biden’s finances and business ventures have pressed forward, one critical question has centered on whether senior Biden administration officials took any steps to impede or disrupt criminal probes into the president’s son.
IRS whistleblowers Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, a case agent previously assigned to the Hunter Biden investigation told lawmakers that they recommended federal charges be brought against Hunter Biden at the conclusion of their tax investigation but were told prosecutors in Delaware could not pursue charges in other jurisdictions and that Weiss had been denied special counsel status at the time. They alleged intentional slow-walking and “an undeniable pattern of preferential treatment” in the federal probe.
“There were really earth-shaking statements made by David Weiss,” Shapley said in an exclusive interview with CBS News earlier this year. “And the first one was that he is not the deciding person on whether or not charges are filed,” the whistleblower added. “It was just shocking to me.”
In a letter to Congress, Weiss refuted claims made by Shapley saying he did not request special counsel status and said he had not been blocked from pursuing charges in jurisdictions outside of Delaware.
Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed Weiss to be special counsel in August, after Weiss had informed him that his investigation had reached a stage where he believed his work should continue as a special counsel, a designation that confers greater autonomy in conducting a probe.
Former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Pennsylvania Scott Brady, a Trump appointee, also testified before the House Judiciary Committee in the Republican-led probe into Hunter Biden’s business ventures. Brady said that his office initially made little progress in its investigation. He had been assigned by then-Attorney General Bill Barr to look into Ukraine and Hunter Biden’s role on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma.
Brady said his office ran into several roadblocks in trying to collaborate with the FBI, including heightened steps of approval and sign-off during the investigative process.
“I think there was reluctance on the part of the FBI to really do any tasking related to our assignment from [Deputy Attorney General] Rosen and looking into allegations of Ukrainian corruption broadly and then specifically anything that intersected with Hunter Biden,” Scott told lawmakers in closed-door testimony. “It was very challenging.”
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Recapping Hunter Biden’s arraignment on federal gun charges
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Recapping Hunter Biden’s arraignment on federal gun charges – CBS News
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Hunter Biden pleads not guilty at arraignment on felony gun charges
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The son of President Joe Biden pleaded not guilty Tuesday to three felony gun charges, after a deal that included a diversion in connection with a firearms charge and a guilty plea to two misdemeanor tax charges collapsed in court over the summer.
The hearing got underway around 10 a.m., with Hunter Biden entering the courthouse around 9:45 a.m.
The conditions of his release remain similar to what was imposed in July. Of note, the judge said that since that hearing in July, Hunter has been “communicative with and responsive” to the probation office in California. He has also been drug tested a number of times and they have all come back negative. Drug testing remains part of his conditions of release.
If convicted on all three charges, Hunter Biden faces a maximum of 25 years in prison and up to $750,000 in fines.
The next court date has not yet been assigned, but there is a pretrial motion deadline of Nov. 3.
Hunter Biden’s attorney Abbe Lowell said they plan to file a motion to dismiss on the grounds that the diversion agreement is still valid. Lowell also said they will seek a dismissal that one of the statutes he is charged with violating — a ban on gun possession for drug users — is unconstitutional.
The argument hinged on a new framework laid out by the Supreme Court last year in a closely watched decision that expanded gun rights. In its ruling, the court’s conservative majority said gun restrictions must be consistent with the “nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation.”
Anna Moneymaker / Getty Images
In the wake of the high court’s ruling, scores of longstanding gun laws have faced fresh scrutiny, and Abbe Lowell, Hunter Biden’s lawyer, has publicly suggested he believes the law banning drug users from having guns is unconstitutional, as some federal courts have found.
The charges against Hunter Biden stem from his possession of a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver in October 2018, which prosecutors previously said he unlawfully possessed for 11 days after lying on the firearm registration form about his drug use. One count alleges Hunter Biden provided a false written statement about his drug use on the form used for firearms purchases, and the second count is for allegedly giving a false statement to the dealer to keep for its records, as required by the federal government. The third count is for allegedly possessing a firearm while he was a known drug user.
If convicted on all charges, Hunter Biden could face a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison and fines of up to $750,000.
In response to the indictment, Lowell said his client “was not a threat to public safety” when he possessed the unloaded gun and said of special counsel David Weiss that his “bending to political pressure presents a grave threat to our system of justice.”
“We believe these charges are barred by the agreement the prosecutors made with Mr. Biden, the recent rulings by several federal courts that this statute is unconstitutional, and the facts that he did not violate that law, and we plan to demonstrate all of that in court,” he continued.
The charges are the first brought by Weiss in his investigation into Hunter Biden since he was appointed special counsel by Attorney General Merrick Garland last month. Other potential charges, including the tax counts Hunter Biden had previously intended to plead guilty to, could still be brought against the president’s son.
For now at least, if the case goes to trial, it could take place in the midst of Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.
A looming court fight over historical tradition
Though the case against Hunter Biden is in its early stages, questions have arisen about the constitutionality of the law cited in the indictment against him on the possession charge.
In the wake of the June 2022 Supreme Court decision that laid out a new standard for determining whether firearms restrictions comport with the Constitution, some U.S. district courts have found the drug-user provision does not withstand Second Amendment scrutiny because those courts said the government failed to show how it is consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of gun regulation.
“The current landscape with regard to this unlawful user prohibition is somewhat unclear,” Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law, told CBS News, though he noted that most district courts have upheld the law.
But in August, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit found the drug-user statute to be unconstitutional as applied to a Texas man, Patrick Daniels, who admitted to regularly using marijuana. In its decision, the three-judge panel acknowledged that while the nation’s history and tradition “may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon,” it doesn’t “justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage.”
Keith Rosen, a former federal prosecutor, said an issue for the prosecutors in the case involving Hunter Biden could be establishing that he was actively using drugs in the 11-day span he had the revolver.
“I think this is going to be an important question that the defense is going to raise as they litigate this case. I suspect they’ll argue, just like in Daniels, that it may be true that Hunter was using drugs during this period of time when he got the gun, but unless the government can prove that he was high at the time that he physically had the gun then they can’t prevail,” Rosen said. “I think the government will resist that. Historically, courts would not have required the government to prove that somebody was high at the specific time that they were holding the weapon, but in light of Daniels I think that’s going to be a live issue in this case.”
Willinger said there is “interesting interplay” between the illegal possession charge and the other two in the indictment related to the alleged false statements.
“It does seem like the lying charges may rise and fall with the [possession] charge because if it turns out that a court says [the measure] is unconstitutional as applied to Biden, then the sale would not have been unlawful,” he said.
The charges against Hunter Biden were brought in federal district court in Delaware, where appeals are heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit. That court has been asked to review a Pennsylvania man’s conviction on three counts of possession of a firearm by an unlawful drug user, who argues the law doesn’t pass constitutional muster.
The Biden administration has urged courts to uphold the statute, pointing to founding-era laws that disarmed intoxicated people, people struggling with mental illness and those deemed dangerous to public peace or safety. Willinger predicted the Justice Department would maintain that position in the case involving Hunter Biden.
“It seems to me a little more of an obvious case to take on appeal and to push hard for constitutionality here from the government’s perspective because it’s not dealing with marijuana, where you have legalization at the state level. It’s dealing with a different controlled substance,” Willinger said.
The White House has declined to comment on the case involving the president’s son, directing questions to the Justice Department.
While the Supreme Court’s decision last year in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, now known simply as Bruen, has threatened decades-old gun laws, the justices will have the chance to clarify their historical tradition test with a case they will hear Nov. 7.
That dispute involves the 30-year-old law prohibiting people under domestic violence restraining orders from having guns, which the 5th Circuit concluded was unconstitutional because the government failed to meet its burden of showing it’s consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of gun regulation.
The Justice Department could also ask the high court to review a 3rd Circuit decision that struck down a law banning felons from having guns.
“The combination of those two cases might shed some light on how the court believes that this new test applies in this prohibited-persons category,” Willinger said.
He noted that the court could adopt a view expressed by Justice Amy Coney Barrett when she was a federal appeals court judge, in which she concluded that history shows that legislatures have the power to bar dangerous people from possessing guns.
“If the court really embraces that dangerousness principle, then I think it has potentially major consequences for the felon ban and also potentially for these other provisions like,” the prohibition on unlawful drug users, Willinger said.
Still, he said it would be “pretty startling” for the Supreme Court to strike down the drug-user provision on its face.
“I find that to be unlikely, especially when you start to think about some of the controlled substances that might be sort of reality-altering drugs. I don’t see the Supreme Court or really a majority of circuit courts reaching that outcome,” he said.
Second Amendment groups respond
Though Hunter Biden could join those challenging the constitutionality of gun laws under the conservative Supreme Court’s new framework, pro-Second Amendment groups are not jumping to his defense.
Gun Owners for America said after Hunter Biden’s indictment that it “opposes all gun control, but so long as this President continues to use every tool at his disposal to harass and criminalize guns, gun owners and gun dealers, his son should be receiving the same treatment and scrutiny as all of us.”
National Rifle Association spokesman Billy McLaughlin told CBS News that “laws should be applied equally against all criminals.”
The group added, “The United States Supreme Court has ruled that federal law prohibits ‘knowingly mak[ing] any false statement or representation with respect to the information required by this chapter to be kept in the records’ of a federally licensed gun dealer.’ The Bruen ruling does not address this matter.”
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Attorney General Merrick Garland: The 60 Minutes Interview
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Attorney General Merrick Garland: The 60 Minutes Interview – CBS News
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10/1/2023: Attorney General; The Rise and Fall of Sam Bankman-Fried
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Attorney General Merrick Garland discusses the process behind Trump, Hunter Biden prosecutions
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Attorney General Merrick Garland discussed the process behind the federal prosecutions of former President Donald Trump, and explained that the investigation itself determines the timing, disputing allegations they were timed to be detrimental to the former president’s reelection campaign.
Garland explained the process of the timing of the prosecutions of Trump to correspondent Scott Pelley in a 60 Minutes interview that aired this week. “Justice Department prosecutors are nonpartisan. They don’t allow partisan considerations to play any role in their determinations.”
Trump faces two federal trials. One for allegedly hoarding classified documents and covering it up, the other, for allegedly conspiring to seize power after the 2020 election.
“Prosecutors, special counsel they follow the facts and the law where they lead,” Garland said. “When they’ve gotten the amount of evidence necessary to make a charging decision and they’ve decided that a charge is warranted, that’s when they bring their cases.”
“The investigation itself has determined the timing?” Pelley asked.
“Yes. Exactly right,” Garland said.
Garland on President Biden, Hunter Biden special counsel cases
Separately, President Biden is the subject of a special counsel investigation looking into whether he improperly held classified documents after he was vice president. President Biden’s son, Hunter, is also the target of a four-year investigation into his taxes and business deals. He’s been indicted for lying about drug abuse when he bought a gun. Republicans accuse the prosecutor, Special Counsel David Weiss, of slow walking the investigation.
“The allegation is, Mr. Attorney General, that what is described in some quarters as the Biden Justice Department is taking it easy on the president’s son,” Pelley told Garland.
“Well, look. This investigation began under David Weiss,” Garland said. “David Weiss is a longstanding career prosecutor, and he was appointed by Mr. Trump as the United States attorney for the district of Delaware. I promised at my nomination hearing that I would continue him on in that position and that I would not interfere with his investigation.”
Garland has committed to giving Weiss whatever he needs for his investigation and explained that neither he, nor the White House, has attempted to influence the special counsel. Garland offered the same sentiment while testifying before the House Judiciary Committee in September.
“I am not the president’s lawyer,” Garland said then. “I will add, I am not Congress’ prosecutor.”
Garland’s relationships with President Biden, Jack Smith
The prosecutor in the Trump cases is Jack Smith. He was named by Garland to be special counsel – that’s a job under the regulations of the Justice Department designed to give Smith independence from the Department and the White House.
“The most important aspect of the regulations is that the special counsel is not subject to the day-to-day supervision of anyone in the Justice Department,” Garland told Pelley.
“You are not in communication with the president or any member of his administration with regard to the investigation of former President Trump?” Pelley asked.
“No, I am not,” Garland said.
“If President Biden asked you to take action with regard to the Trump investigation,” Pelley asked, “what would your reaction be?”
“I am sure that that will not happen, but I would not do anything in that regard,” Garland said. “And if necessary, I would resign. But there is no sense that anything like that will happen.”
“Have you ever had to tell him,” Pelley asked. “‘Hands off these investigations, Mr. President?’”
“No,” Garland said, “because he has never tried to put hands on these investigations.”
“How’s your relationship with the president?” Pelley asked. “It must be frosty.”
“I have a good working relationship with the president,” Garland said.
Good, perhaps, but maybe not close. The president addressed their relationship during an August White House event,when he spotted Garland.
“Attorney General Garland, I haven’t seen you in a long while, good to see you,” Biden said. “You think I’m kidding, I’m not.”
Garland on independence of special counsel investigations
The Attorney General would not discuss the specifics of the Department of Justice’s investigations into former President Donald Trump or President Biden’s son, Hunter, during his interview with 60 Minutes, a decision based on a long-time Department rule.
“I think the first thing to understand is because these are pending cases,” Garland told Pelley, “because there are two federal indictments, the longstanding rule in the Justice Department is that we can’t comment about pending cases.”
“Where does that rule come from?” Pelley asked. “What’s the point?”
“One reason is protecting the privacy and the civil liberties of the person who’s under investigation,” Garland said. “It’s to protect witnesses who also may or may not become public later in an investigation. And then finally, it’s to protect the investigation itself. Investigations proceed in many different directions, eventually coming to a fruition, a decision to charge or not charge a particular thing or not. And if witnesses and potential subjects knew everything that the investigators had previously looked at and were about to look at, it could well change testimony. It could well make witnesses unavailable to us.”
“And this is not peculiar to the Trump investigations?” Pelley asked.
“This is the rule for all investigations,” Garland said. “This is part of what we call our Justice manual. It’s been there for probably at least 30 years and probably longer than that.”
“Are you essentially saying,” Pelley asked, “as attorney general to the American people, ‘Trust me?’”
“In the end, I suppose it does in the end come down to trust,” Garland said. “But it’s not just me. It’s decades of the– of the norms of this department that are part of the DNA of the career prosecutors who are running the investigation and supervising the investigations that you’re talking about.”
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Attorney General Merrick Garland on the independence of Trump and Hunter Biden investigations
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Not since Watergate has an attorney general been at the center of such a firestorm. Merrick Garland’s Justice Department is prosecuting both former President Trump and the son of President Biden. Caught in the middle is this 70-year-old former prosecutor and well-respected judge with a long history as a moderate. We met Garland Friday in Washington. He told us that he devoted his life to the rule of law because of his family’s struggle to escape the Holocaust. Now he’s responsible for prosecutions that will shape the future of the nation. In a rare interview, the attorney general told us that in the Trump and Biden trials ahead, his prosecutors will pursue justice without fear and without favor.
Merrick Garland: We do not have one rule for Republicans and another rule for Democrats. We don’t have one rule for foes and another for friends. We don’t have one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless, for the rich or for the poor, based on ethnicity. We have only one rule; and that one rule is that we follow the facts and the law, and we reach the decisions required by the Constitution, and we protect civil liberties.
Scott Pelley: Are you essentially saying as attorney general to the American people, “Trust me”?
Merrick Garland: Well, in the end, I suppose it does in the end come down to trust. But it’s not just me. It’s decades of the– of the norms of this department that are part of the DNA of the career prosecutors who are running the investigation and supervising the investigations that you’re talking about.
Former President Trump faces two federal trials. One for allegedly hoarding classified documents and covering it up, the other, for allegedly conspiring to seize power after the 2020 election. Attorney General Garland has said little about this and we wanted to understand why.
Merrick Garland: Well, I think the first thing to understand is because these are pending cases, because there are two federal indictments, the longstanding rule in the Justice Department is that we can’t comment about pending cases
Scott Pelley: Where does that rule come from? What’s the point?
Merrick Garland: One reason is to protect the privacy and the civil liberties of the person who’s under investigation. It’s to protect witnesses who also may or may not become public later in an investigation. And then finally, it’s to protect the investigation itself. Investigations proceed in many different directions, eventually coming to a fruition, a decision to charge or not charge about a particular thing or not. And if witnesses and potential subjects knew everything that the investigators had previously looked at and were about to look at, it could well change testimony. It could well make witnesses unavailable to us.
Scott Pelley: And this is not peculiar to the Trump investigations?
Merrick Garland: This is the rule for all investigations. This is part of what we call our Justice manual. It’s been there for probably at least 30 years and probably longer than that.
Scott Pelley: Help us understand the timing. These prosecutions of the former president are happening during the campaign. You could make the argument that it’s the worst possible time.
Merrick Garland: The Justice Department has general practices about not making significant, overt steps or charging within a month or so of an election, and we are clearly outside that– that time frame in these cases. Prosecutors, special counsel they follow the facts and the law where they lead. When they’ve– gotten the– amount of evidence necessary to make a charging decision and they’ve decided that a charge is warranted, that’s when they bring their cases.
Scott Pelley: The investigation itself has determined the timing?
Merrick Garland: Yes. Exactly right.
Scott Pelley: Your critics say that it’s timed to ruin Mr. Trump’s chances in the election.
Merrick Garland: Well, that’s absolutely not true. Justice Department prosecutors are nonpartisan. They don’t allow partisan considerations to play any role in their determinations.
Alex Brandon/AP
The prosecutor in the Trump cases is Jack Smith. He was named by Garland to be special counsel – that’s a job under the regulations of the Justice Department designed to give Smith broad independence from the department and from the White House.
Merrick Garland: The most important aspect of the regulations is that the special counsel is not subject to the day-to-day supervision of anyone in the Justice Department.
Scott Pelley: You are not in communication with the president or any member of his administration with regard to the investigation of Former President Trump?
Merrick Garland: No, I am not.
Scott Pelley: If President Biden asked you to take action with regard to the Trump investigation, what would your reaction be?
Merrick Garland: I am sure that that will not happen, but I would not do anything in that regard. And if necessary, I would resign. But there is no sense that anything like that will happen.
Scott Pelley: Have you ever had to tell him, “Hands off these investigations, Mr. President”?
Merrick Garland: No because he has never tried to put hands on these investigations.
Separately, President Biden, himself, is the subject of a special counsel investigation into whether he improperly held classified documents after he was vice president. His son, Hunter Biden, is the target of a four year investigation into his business deals and his taxes. He’s been indicted, for lying about drug abuse when he bought a gun. Republicans accuse special counsel David Weiss of slow-walking the Hunter Biden investigation.
Scott Pelley: The allegation is, Mr. Attorney General, that what is described in some quarters as the Biden Justice Department is taking it easy on the president’s son.
Merrick Garland: Well, look. This investigation began under David Weiss. David Weiss is a longstanding career prosecutor, and he was appointed by Mr. Trump as the United States attorney for the district of Delaware. I promised at my nomination hearing that I would continue him on in that position and that I would not interfere with his investigation.
Scott Pelley: You are not participating in those decisions?
Merrick Garland: No, Mr. Weiss is making those decisions.
Scott Pelley: The White House is not attempting to influence those decisions?
Merrick Garland: Absolutely not.
And, he said, we won’t have to take his word for it. Under Justice Department regulations, a special counsel must write a final report.
Merrick Garland: Which I will make public to the extent. permissible under the law, that is required to explain their prosecutive decisions, their decisions to prosecute or not prosecute and their strategic decisions along the way. Usually, the special counsels have testified at the end of their reports, and I expect that that will be the case here.
Scott Pelley: How’s your relationship with the president? It must be frosty.
Merrick Garland: I have a good working relationship with the president.
Good, perhaps, but maybe not close. The president addressed the question in August, when he spotted garland at a White House event.
President Biden at White House event: Attorney General Garland, I haven’t seen you in a long while, good to see you. Secretary of Homeland…you think I’m kidding, I’m not. (LAUGHTER)
Attorney General Garland leads 115,000 employees prosecutors, agents of the FBI, and other federal law enforcement. Additional security is now assigned to protect judges and prosecutors after the Trump cases drew death threats. Political violence is among Garland’s gravest concerns.
Merrick Garland: People can argue with each other as much as they want and as vociferously as they want. But the one thing they may not do is use violence and threats of violence to alter the outcome. An important aspect of this is the American people themselves. American people must protect each other. They must ensure that they treat each other with civility and kindness, listen to opposing views, argue as vociferously as they want, but refrain from violence and threats of violence. That’s the only way this democracy will survive.
Scott Pelley: Why do you feel so strongly about that?
Merrick Garland: Well, I feel it for a number of reasons and a number of things that I’ve seen. But for my own family, who– who– fled religious persecution in Europe and some members who did not– survive. When they got to the United States, United States protected them. It guaranteed– that they could practice their religion, that they could vote, they could do all the things they thought a democracy would provide. That’s the difference between this country and many other countries. And it’s my responsibility, it’s the Justice Department’s responsibility to ensure that that difference continues, that we protect each other.
Scott Pelley: Two of your ancestors were murdered in the Holocaust.
Merrick Garland: Yes.
Scott Pelley: Is that why you devoted yourself to the law?
Merrick Garland: Yes. That’s– I would say that’s why I devoted myself to the rule of law– to public service– to trying to ensure that the rule of law governs this country and continues to govern this country.
Merrick Garland has spent a life in the law. At Justice, he oversaw the Oklahoma City bombing case an act of political terrorism. Later, after nearly two decades as a federal appeals court judge he was nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Obama. But Republicans stalled the nomination for ten months until Donald Trump was sworn in. President-elect Biden picked Garland for attorney general on the same day the Capitol was attacked. That became one of the largest investigations in the department’s history.
Merrick Garland: We’ve arrested and brought charges against more than 1,100 people. There are– more to come. The videos that every single person happened to have on their phones that security cameras had, that bystanders had, that the media had at the time disclose faces, some of which we have not yet been able to connect to people.
Scott Pelley: You’re looking for new suspects, new defendants, still?
Merrick Garland: Yeah. That’s not that they’re new suspects, but they are people that we haven’t found yet.
Scott Pelley: Why do these prosecutions mean so much to you?
Merrick Garland: Because this is a fundamental aspect of our democracy. If we can’t ensure that this kind of behavior doesn’t recur, it will occur. The prosecutions we bring are deterrents against that from happening.
Garland knows he will be vilified no matter how the Trump and Biden cases are decided. His job he told us, was to “take the arrows” for the department. He has learned to embrace the pain that comes with the job. And we saw that at DEA headquarters where he was surrounded by those lost to the opioid epidemic and their grieving families. Meeting them, he told us, reminds him of why he fights and whom he is fighting for.
Merrick Garland: I represent the American people. I don’t represent the president. I represent the American people. And likewise, I am not Congress’s prosecutor. I work for the American people.
And if ‘democracy’ is an emotional subject for Merrick Garland, maybe it’s because he has witnessed how suddenly it can be threatened, in Oklahoma City and Washington D.C.
Scott Pelley: When the history of this extraordinary time is written, what is the best that Merrick Garland can hope for?
Merrick Garland: I think it’s the best any public servant can hope for: that we’ve done our best. That we pass on a Justice Department that continues to pursue the rule of law and protect it. And it’s the same thing that every generation has to hope– that we can pass our democracy on in working order to the next generation that picks up the torch and is responsible when we’re finished– to continue that job.
Produced by Pat Milton and Aaron Weisz. Associate producer, Ian Flickinger. Broadcast associates, Michelle Karim and Eliza Costas. Edited by Peter M. Berman. Assistant editor, Aisha Crespo.
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GOP-led House committees subpoena Hunter Biden and James Biden
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House Republicans issued three subpoenas Thursday for Hunter Biden and James Biden’s personal and business banking records, as part of the impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, an escalation in their investigation of the Biden family’s business dealings.
The latest subpoenas come after the GOP-led House Oversight Committee held its first impeachment inquiry hearing into President Biden Thursday, focusing on Republican allegations of “constitutional and legal questions surrounding the President’s involvement in corruption and abuse of public office,” according to a committee spokesperson. Three House committees are looking into whether Mr. Biden “abused his federal office to enrich his family and conceal his and/or his family’s misconduct,” according to a memo written by the Republican chairs of the House Oversight, Judiciary and Ways and Means Committees that outlined the view of the factual and legal basis for the inquiry.
“The subpoenaed bank records will help the Committees determine whether Joe Biden abused his office by selling access and/or by receiving payments or other benefits in exchange for official acts,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer and House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan said in a letter accompanying the subpoenas.
Mr. Biden has denied any involvement in his son’s foreign work.
“I have not taken a penny from any foreign source, ever, in my life,” Mr. Biden said in October 2020 at a presidential debate.
The two chairmen said they’re concerned that Hunter Biden and other Biden family members “sought to conceal the source of foreign income by having lucrative wires sent to Biden associates’ accounts, instead of their own accounts,” and added, “We believe these records will provide insight as to where the foreign money was finally sent.”
Hunter Biden attorney Abbe Lowell did not immediately respond to a request for comment, and neither did attorneys for James Biden.
Last year, Senate Republicans scrutinized James Biden’s business ventures, releasing records that showed payments James Biden’s company, The Lion Hall Group, received from a Chinese-financed consulting group in 2018, and monthly retainers to James and Hunter Biden.
Hunter Biden’s foreign business affairs have been at the center of the investigations led by congressional Republicans. Comer released a series of memorandums earlier this year with bank records detailing millions in payments received by Hunter Biden and his associates from foreign entities during Joe Biden’s vice presidency, alleging the president was aware of his son’s business dealings and “allowed himself to be ‘the brand’ sold to enrich the Biden family.”
In closed-door testimony before the House Oversight Committee in July, Devon Archer, Hunter Biden’s former business associate, who served with him on the board of Ukrainian energy company Burisma, said Hunter Biden sought to use the Biden brand for leverage in his business dealings, but he said he had no knowledge of any direct involvement by President Biden with Burisma. Archer also testified that Hunter Biden placed his father on a speaker phone call with a business associate during a dinner meeting in Beijing, but Joe Biden did not discuss business.
Ian Sams, White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, said Congressional Republicans were using the probe to distract from a potential government shutdown, and called the impeachment inquiry “nothing more than a baseless wild goose chase,” in a post to X, formerly known as Twitter.
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Takeaways from President Biden’s first impeachment hearing by House Oversight panel | CNN Politics
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House Republicans kicked off their first impeachment inquiry hearing Thursday laying out the allegations they will pursue against President Joe Biden, though their expert witnesses acknowledged Republicans don’t yet have the evidence to prove the accusation they’re leveling.
Thursday’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee didn’t include witnesses who could speak directly to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealing at the center of the inquiry, but the hearing offered Republicans the chance to show some of the evidence they’ve uncovered to date.
None of that evidence has shown Joe Biden received any financial benefit from his son’s business dealings, but Republicans said at Thursday’s hearing what they’ve found so far has given them the justification to launch their impeachment inquiry.
Democrats responded by accusing Republicans of doing Donald Trump’s bidding and raising his and his family’s various foreign dealings themselves, as well as Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate in 2019 the same allegations now being raised in the impeachment inquiry.
Here’s takeaways from Thursday’s first impeachment inquiry hearing:
While Republicans leveled accusations of corruption against Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, the GOP expert witnesses who testified Thursday were not ready to go that far.
Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.
“I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud or wrongdoing,” Dubinsky said. “More information needs to be gathered before I can make such an assessment.”
He said there was a “smokescreen” surrounding Hunter Biden’s finances, including complex overseas shell companies, which he said raise questions for a fraud expert about possible “illicit” activities.
Conservative law professor Jonathan Turley also said that the House does not yet have evidence to support articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but argued that House Republicans were justified in opening an impeachment inquiry.
“I want to emphasize what it is that we’re here today for. This is a question of an impeachment inquiry. It is not a vote on articles of impeachment,” Turley said. “In fact, I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish. But I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden.”
Turley said that Biden’s false statements about his knowledge of Hunter Biden’s business endeavors, as well as the unproven allegations that Biden may have benefited from his son’s business deals, were reason for the House to move forward with the impeachment inquiry. (CNN has previously reported that Joe Biden’s unequivocal denials of any business-related contact with his son have been undercut over time, including by evidence uncovered by House Republicans.)
Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, has repeatedly backed up Republican arguments on key legal matters in recent years, including his opposition to Trump’s first and second impeachments.
Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, pushed Turley further on his comments, asking whether he would vote “no” today on impeachment.
“On this evidence, certainly,” Turley said. “At the moment, these are allegations. There is some credible evidence there that is the basis of the allegations.”
House Republicans opened their first impeachment hearing Thursday with a series of lofty claims against the president, as they try to connect him to his son’s “corrupt” business dealings overseas.
House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer claimed the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” even though he hasn’t put forward any concrete evidence backing up that massive allegation.
Two other Republican committee chairs further pressed their case, including by citing some of the newly released Internal Revenue Service documents, which two IRS whistleblowers claim show how the Justice Department intervened in the Hunter Biden criminal probe to protect the Biden family. However, many of their examples of alleged wrongdoing occurred during the Trump administration before Joe Biden took office.
Ahead of the hearing, the Republican chairs released a formal framework laying out the scope of their probe, saying it “will span the time of Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency to the present, including his time out of office.”
The document outlines specific lines of inquiry, including whether Biden engaged in “corruption, bribery, and influence peddling” – none of which Republicans have proved yet.
The memo included four questions the Republicans are seeking to answer related to whether Biden took any action related to payments his family received or if the president obstructed the investigations into Hunter Biden.
At the close of the hearing Thursday, Comer announced that he was issuing subpoenas for the bank records of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden.
The subpoenas will be for Hunter and James Biden’s personal and business bank records, a source familiar with the subpoenas confirmed.
The subpoenas are not a surprise, as Comer has been signaling his intention to issue the subpoenas for the personal bank records. They show where Republicans will head next in their investigation as they continue to seek evidence to substantiate their unproven allegations about the president.
Some inside the GOP expressed frustration to CNN in real time with how the House GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is playing out, as the Republican witnesses directly undercut the GOP’s own narrative and admit there is no evidence that Biden has committed impeachable offenses.
“You want witnesses that make your case. Picking witnesses that refute House Republicans arguments for impeachment is mind blowing,” one senior GOP aide told CNN. “This is an unmitigated disaster.”
One GOP lawmaker also expressed some disappointment with their performance thus far, telling CNN: “I wish we had more outbursts.”
The bar for Thursday’s hearing was set low: Republicans admitted they would not reveal any new evidence, but were hoping to at least make the public case for why their impeachment inquiry is warranted, especially as some of their own members remain skeptical of the push.
But some Republicans are not even paying attention, as Congress is on the brink of a shutdown – a point Democrats hammered during the hearing.
“I haven’t watched or listened to a moment of it,” said another GOP lawmaker. There’s a shutdown looming.”
Democrats repeatedly pointed out that the Republican allegations about foreign payments were tied to money that went mostly Hunter Biden – but not the to the president.
“The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee.
Raskin’s staff brought in the 12,000 pages of bank records the committee has received so far, as Raskin said, “not a single page shows a dime going to President Joe Biden.”
Raskin also had a laptop open displaying a countdown clock for when the government shuts down in a little more than two days – another point Democrats used to bash Republicans for focusing on impeachment and failing to pass bills to fund the government. The Democrats passed the laptop around to each lawmaker as they had their five minutes to question the witnesses.
Their arguments also previewed how Democrats intend to play defense for the White House as Republicans move forward on their impeachment inquiry.
The Democrats needled Republicans for not holding a vote on an impeachment inquiry – one Democrat asked Turley whether he would recommend a vote, which Turley said he would.
House Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of Trump was sparked by Trump’s attempts to push Ukraine to investigate allegations involving Biden and his son’s position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company – some of the same allegations now being probed by the House GOP.
That led Democrats Thursday to push for testimony from Rudy Giuliani, who as Trump’s personal lawyer sought to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine in 2019.
Twice, the Democrats forced the Oversight Committee to vote on Democratic motions to subpoena Giuliani, votes that served as stunts to try to hammer home their argument that Giuliani tried and failed to corroborate the same allegations at the heart of the Biden impeachment inquiry.
“I ask the question: Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, one of the Democrats who forced the procedural vote. “That’s how we got here, ladies and gentlemen. And this committee is afraid to bring him before us and put him on the record. Shame! And the question was raised. What does this have to do with it? It has everything to do with it.”
In addition to Giuliani, Raskin sought testimony from Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani’s who was indicted in 2019. Parnas subsequently cooperated with the Democratic impeachment inquiry, including providing a statement from a top official at Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company, stating, “No one from Burisma had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him.”
Several Democrats also raised Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who worked in the White House, receiving $2 billion from Saudi Arabia through a company he formed after leaving the White House.
The Democrats charged that Kushner’s actions were far worse than Hunter Biden’s, because Kushner worked in government, while Biden’s son did not.
This story has been updated with additional details.
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Hunter Biden Slaps Rudy Giuliani With Lawsuit Over Laptop Data, Claims It Was Illegally Obtained
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Already drowning in legal battles, Hunter Biden has willingly added another to the list in pursuit of a more aggressive strategy. On Tuesday, Biden’s attorneys filed a lawsuit against Rudy Giuliani, his companies, and his former lawyer Robert Costello, on allegations of violating federal and California computer fraud laws. Giuliani and Costello, the suit claims, illegally obtained Biden’s digital data in order to “access, tamper with, manipulate, alter, damage, and copy” it.
Giuliani and his allies have said he was given an external hard drive associated with Biden’s laptop—which Biden allegedly left at a Delaware computer repair store but never retrieved—during his time as Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and cybersecurity adviser. But by repeatedly accessing the hard drive, the suit alleges, Giuliani and Costello engaged in illegal hacking efforts and are responsible for “the ‘total annihilation’ of Plaintiff’s digital privacy…[and] data.”
“In light of the foregoing illegal activities by Defendants, their refusals to cease and desist in their unlawful behavior, and their apparent intention to continue violating the law in the future, Plaintiff has no alternative but to commence this lawsuit,” Biden’s attorneys write in the lawsuit filed in a federal court in Los Angeles.
In a statement responding to the lawsuit, Giuliani’s spokesman Ted Goodman said, “Hunter Biden has previously refused to admit ownership of the laptop. I’m not surprised he’s now falsely claiming his laptop hard drive was manipulated by Mayor Giuliani, considering the sordid material and potential evidence of crimes on that thing.” Costello did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
With assistance from Giuliani, the contents of the digital files first became public in a New York Post story published weeks before the 2020 election. But the suit claims that at least some of the data was “manipulated, altered, and damaged” prior to it being sent to Giuliani and Costello, who allegedly then made “further alterations.”
Giuliani has maintained that he was free to comb through the files because Biden allegedly abandoned them. However, the data’s original owner does not agree. “If you take your coat to the dry cleaner and leave your wallet in it, and you forget to pick it up, it doesn’t mean the dry cleaner gets the wallet and all your money. It’s just common sense,” a Biden attorney told Politico while describing their legal strategy against Giuliani. The same attorney, who spoke anonymously, suggested that Biden could pursue additional litigation in the future: “Everyone involved in stealing and manipulating Hunter’s data should be hearing footsteps right about now.”
Biden, meanwhile, has been the subject of a Justice Department investigation into his potential violations of tax, firearm, and money laundering laws. The first son was recently indicted by Special Counsel David Weiss for purchasing a handgun in 2018 while allegedly still addicted to crack cocaine. He is also facing a congressional probe, under the House GOP’s effort to impeach Joe Biden for supposedly using his position as vice president to enrich his son and other family members. Republican lawmakers have yet to produce any evidence in support of this claim. Lately, Hunter Biden has shown more of a willingness to punch back. Earlier this month, he sued former Trump aide Garrett Ziegler in a filing similar to his offensive against Giuliani, and sued the IRS for allegedly violating his personal financial privacy.
As for Giuliani, the former New York City mayor is in his own legal miasma. A federal judge found him liable last month for defaming two Georgia election workers whom he had falsely accused of manipulating ballots during the 2020 election. He has also been indicted in the Fulton County district attorney’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s alleged election tampering in Georgia. (He has pleaded not guilty to the charges.) And in May, Giuliani was sued by a former employee for sexual assault wage theft, and other workplace misconduct—all of which he denies.
Making matters worse, Giuliani appears unable to cover his mounting legal bills. Last week, Costello, the other defendant named in Hunter Biden’s lawsuit, sued Giuliani for allegedly failing to pay a more than $1.3 million bill he owes for legal services.
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Judge Rules Hunter Biden Must Attend Arraignment Hearing In Person
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A judge on Wednesday denied a motion by President Joe Biden’s son Hunter to have his initial court appearance and arraignment held over video conference following his indictment on federal gun charges.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Christopher Burke sided with prosecutors, saying that all defendants “regardless of their location or personal circumstance” have been required to appear in person for their first court appearance with the exception of the years when the coronavirus pandemic was at its height.
“Other than during the exigent circumstances of the COVID crisis (when the Court was proceeding under the auspices of the now-expired CARES Act standing order), in 12 years as a judge on this Court, the undersigned cannot recall ever having conducted an initial appearance other than in person,” Burke wrote.
Burke added that Biden shouldn’t receive any special treatment.
“Any other defendant would be required to attend his or her initial appearance in person,” Burke wrote. “So too here.”
The hearing has been scheduled for Oct. 3 in Delaware.
Earlier this week, Hunter Biden’s lawyer Abbe David Lowell argued there was no need for his client to show up in court, citing the strain his travel would put on the government given the short duration of the hearing. The president’s son resides in California.
Biden seeks to “minimize an unnecessary burden on government resources and the disruption to the courthouse and downtown areas when a person protected by the Secret Service flies across the country and then must be transported to and from a downtown location,” Lowell wrote.
Lowell also said Biden would enter a not-guilty plea, adding that “there is no reason why he cannot utter those two words by video conference.”
But prosecutors opposed the request.
“If ‘convenience’ was a legitimate basis to warrant virtual proceedings, every defendant would ask for them in every case,” special counsel David Weiss wrote in a letter to Burke Wednesday.
Weiss added that the collapse of the plea deal at a hearing earlier this summer points to why having an in-person proceeding could be more “conducive” to resolving unforeseen issues.
“The previous arraignment held in connection with this matter was anything but routine because the defendant and his previous attorney were not prepared to answer the Court’s questions,” they said.
In July, U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika refused to sign off on a deal Biden made with prosecutors after Noreika raised concerns about parts of the agreement. As part of that deal, Biden would have pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor charges for failure to pay taxes, and would enter a diversion program in place of pleading guilty to felony gun possession as an admitted drug user.
Following the breakdown of the plea deal, Attorney General Merrick Garland elevated Weiss, who is leading the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter Biden, to special counsel status.
Hunter Biden was indicted on three gun charges last week. Two of them concern Biden allegedly submitting a form falsely saying he was not using illegal narcotics when he purchased a Colt Cobra revolver in 2018, and another involves him allegedly possessing that firearm while using narcotics.
Garland on Wednesday rejected GOP suggestions that the DOJ has gone easy on Biden because he is the president’s son.
He added that any decisions in the case are up to Weiss.
“I have intentionally not involved myself in the facts of the case, not because I’m trying to get out of responsibility, but because I am trying to pursue my responsibility,” Garland said during a House Judiciary Committee hearing.
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9/20: CBS Evening News
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9/20: CBS Evening News – CBS News
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Hunter Biden’s Gun Case Isn’t Just Unusual — It’s Possibly Unconstitutional
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When a grand jury indicted Hunter Biden last week for buying a gun in 2018 despite using crack cocaine, the legal logic was clear: You can’t own a gun if you use illegal drugs, and he clearly did both.
The Navy Reserve had discharged the president’s son four years earlier after he tested positive for cocaine, and he discussed his crack addiction in his 2021 autobiography, “Beautiful Things.”
That gives special counsel David Weiss substantial proof that Biden lied when he signed the required ATF form pledging that he did not use illegal drugs so that he could buy a .38-caliber revolver — and that he possessed the gun illegally because of his drug use.
But the seemingly straightforward case is also very unusual. Federal prosecutors almost never file stand-alone charges against drug users who buy or possess guns.
In the rare cases in which they do, prosecutors usually have hard evidence in the form of physical guns and drugs that were discovered in the defendant’s possession. It’s usually after a drug search or traffic stop turns up those guns and drugs.
In this case, law enforcement never apprehended Biden with drugs, or even the gun.
“I can’t recall a single case like this,” said former U.S. Attorney for North Dakota Tim Purdon, who has both prosecuted and defended dozens of federal firearms cases. “I was an active practitioner in that space for 20 years.”
Stanford Law School professor John Donohue said it was “incredibly unusual” for the gun and drug possession charge against Hunter Biden to be prosecuted, “especially since he didn’t do anything wrong with the gun, other than possess it.” SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images
The list of celebrities who have openly discussed possessing firearms during times that likely overlap with illicit drug use includes podcaster Joe Rogan, actor Brad Pitt, and members of hip-hop group Cypress Hill, whose first album describes possessing guns and marijuana simultaneously in nearly every song.
In theory, the FBI could go chase any of these people down based on that information alone. In practice, federal law enforcement rarely charges these crimes at all.
“It’s hard to find cases where they just charge someone with this,” said Dru Stevenson, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston. “It’s almost always incident to a drug bust. That can happen because of a traffic pullover and they find drugs in the car. They do the drug arrest and they find the guy with a gun, so it’s an extra charge.”
Without such hard evidence, proving that drug abuse coincided with a gun purchase or possession can become tricky.
“Beyond reasonable doubt is a very high standard,” Purdon said. “To prove that someone was a drug user in possession of a firearm, an ideal case would be a blood test taken within an hour of a person handling a firearm that showed the presence of a drug. Without evidence of that sort, I think a lot of prosecutors would be concerned about carrying the burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”
The Justice Department does not routinely publish prosecution data broken down by charging statute. But of the 7,373 firearms offenders sentenced in 2021, the U.S. Sentencing Commission identified only 5.3% as prohibited possessors of firearms because they were drug users. That amounts to about 390 offenders nationwide, or a little more than half a percent of the federal criminal caseload at the district level.
“It’s incredibly unusual for this to be prosecuted, especially since he didn’t do anything wrong with the gun, other than possess it,” said Stanford Law School professor John Donohue. “And he only had the gun for a matter of days ― it wasn’t a long period.”
Hallie Biden, the widow of Hunter Biden’s brother Beau, discovered the gun within a couple of weeks of the purchase and threw it in a dumpster behind a grocery store. A man later found it in the trash while looking for recyclables.
“I don’t think there’s any doubt that the fact that he’s related to the president is harming his prospects here,” Donohue added. “Probably hundreds of thousands or millions of people have done what Biden has done, and no one has prosecuted them or thought to prosecute them.”
“I can’t recall a single case like this. I was an active practitioner in that space for 20 years.”
– Former U.S. Attorney for North Dakota Tim Purdon
Even half a percent of the federal criminal caseload likely exaggerates the Justice Department’s focus on drug-using gun possessors. Prosecutors often decline these cases.
Prosecutors are most likely to pursue charges for possessing guns while using drugs when they suspect the alleged offender is involved in more serious criminal conduct. Federal prosecutors have charged suspected drug dealers and potentially violent political extremists with possessing guns and drugs at the same time, either to secure a conviction or ratchet up pressure for a plea deal, according to the Dallas Morning News.
“When you dig into this and you try to find when this case gets charged, it looks like it gets charged as a tag-along charge to more serious cases of felon-in-possession and things like that,” Purdon said.
Lying on ATF Form 4473, the other major charge that Biden faces, is almost never prosecuted at all, according to data made public by The Washington Post through the Freedom of Information Act. The form requires gun buyers to pledge that they can legally own firearms.
One disqualification that applicants have to answer “yes” or “no” to is whether they are “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.”
In Delaware in fiscal year 2019, the same state and time frame of Biden’s alleged firearm offenses, the U.S. attorney didn’t prosecute a single case against someone lying on ATF Form 4473 about drug use.
When prosecutors did pursue cases against people lying to buy guns, they were usually more serious, typically involving straw purchases.
One woman bought two pistols for her boyfriend, a felon under investigation for attempted murder at the time. Investigators recovered one of the guns after he died in a shootout with police.
Another man bought a Ruger 10/22 in a straw purchase, then handed the rifle off to someone who used it in a home invasion. A third woman bought a pair of pistols at a pawnshop to give to her drug dealer as payment.
Explosive Second Amendment Law
Complicating matters further, the Biden indictment comes in the midst of a Supreme Court-mandated overhaul of Second Amendment rights.
In last year’s landmark case New York State Rifle and Pistol Assn. v. Bruen, the conservative-dominated court held that New York could not keep qualified applicants from obtaining a concealed handgun permit by requiring them to name a specific threat to their safety.
The majority opinion, penned by Justice Clarence Thomas, went on to contend that courts do not have to weigh states’ interest in public safety at all when assessing the constitutionality of gun restrictions. Instead, the Bruen standard only considers gun laws constitutional in cases where they fit within a tradition of gun regulation that can trace its origins to sometime between 1791, when the Bill of Rights was signed, and the end of the Civil War.
That novel and vague standard has created a tidal wave of new constitutional challenges to long-standing gun laws, with lower courts overturning state assault weapons bans, age restrictions for handgun purchases and regulations on possessing firearms with scrubbed serial numbers.
One of the clearest targets for Second Amendment challenges is the provision of the Gun Control Act of 1968 that banned drug users from owning guns.
The wave of marijuana legalization since California legalized medical use in 1996 has created a situation in which many otherwise law-abiding gun owners become felons if they use cannabis, even in legal states. Major cases in several states have challenged the law barring marijuana users from possessing firearms as unconstitutional.
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a conviction last month on constitutional grounds against Mississippi man Patrick Daniels, who was apprehended in his vehicle with a semi-automatic rifle, a pistol and some marijuana. The 11th Circuit will hear oral arguments next month in a constitutional challenge to gun restrictions on medical marijuana patients filed by a group of plaintiffs including former Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried.
Winning gun rights for crack users has less of a social movement behind it, but the energy behind marijuana could have implications for Hunter Biden.
The Supreme Court will give public signals about its evolving thinking on gun rights on Nov. 7, when it’s slated to hear USA v. Rahimi, in which the 5th Circuit overturned a decades-old federal law barring domestic abusers from possessing guns.
With Biden expected to plead not guilty, his case may be among the many legal challenges that ultimately reshape gun legislation in America.
There’s no guarantee that the case will go very far, however. Federal defendants almost never take their cases to trial. Last year, about 8% of them had their cases dismissed, while almost 90% pleaded guilty.
Biden himself almost avoided indictment on the gun charges through a plea deal that fell apart. He still faces federal prosecution for alleged tax violations and the looming possibility of future legal problems tied to his business dealings overseas. That pressure may give him and his legal team an incentive to keep working toward a new plea deal.
And special counsel Weiss also has an incentive to avoid pushing too hard on a prominent case with the potential to rewrite gun law.
“I don’t think that the government wants to settle this question,” Purdon said. “I think they’re afraid of what the answer might be.”
Like many legal scholars, Donohue, the Stanford law professor, sees the Bruen decision as vague and impractical, making it hard to guess whether the Supreme Court will ultimately uphold, limit or overturn prohibitions on drug users possessing guns.
“The problem with the Bruen decision is it literally makes no sense in any way,” Donohue said. “I have a feeling that they may want to pull back a little bit on Bruen. But you never know with them. They seem so confused. They might just double down on Bruen and say, ‘You can’t prohibit any of this stuff.’”
Justice Thomas’ requirement in the Bruen ruling for a historical analog to uphold a gun restriction, however, could work in Biden’s favor in the unlikely event that the Supreme Court does take the case.
“In 1791, there was no crack cocaine,” Donohue said.
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Merrick Garland defends handling of Trump, Hunter Biden probes in combative House hearing
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Merrick Garland defends handling of Trump, Hunter Biden probes in combative House hearing – CBS News
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Merrick Garland Says GOP Allegations About Hunter Biden Case Have No Basis In Reality
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WASHINGTON ― The nation’s top law enforcement officer said Wednesday that Republican allegations of a two-tiered justice system favoring the president’s son are a fantasy.
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing with U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, Republicans said Garland’s Department of Justice has gone easy on Hunter Biden while throwing the book at former President Donald Trump.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat, asked if the rhetoric regarding the Hunter Biden case had “any basis in reality.”
“No, it does not,” Garland replied.
It was a more direct answer than Garland gave to numerous Republican questions about the investigation, which this month resulted in a grand jury indictment against the president’s son for illegally owning a gun and could lead to more charges.
Despite Hunter Biden’s legal peril, Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) declared Wednesday that “the fix is in” at the Justice Department. He alleged that top brass had interfered with an IRS probe into Hunter Biden’s taxes and that other officials had hobbled Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss’ pursuit of the case.
Rep. Mike Johnson (R-La.) said the American public doesn’t trust the Justice Department. “They see the DOJ, of course, aggressively prosecuting President Biden’s political rival, Mr. Trump, while at the same time, they see slow-walking and special treatment given to the president’s son,” he said at the hearing.
Garland stressed that he wasn’t meddling with Hunter Biden’s case, repeatedly noting that Weiss had been tasked with the investigation during the Trump administration and that President Biden left him in his position to finish the case.
Weiss initially reached a plea agreement with Hunter Biden, but the deal collapsed in August amid a disagreement between prosecutors and Biden’s legal team over the scope of his immunity from further prosecution. Garland then elevated Weiss to special counsel status upon his request.
Republicans cited testimony from two IRS whistleblowers who said Justice Department officials blocked some of their efforts to pursue the case, such as by disapproving certain search warrants and by alerting the Secret Service to plans to approach Hunter Biden for an interview. More recent testimony from FBI whistleblowers has cast doubt on some of their claims.
While insinuating there were efforts to shield the Biden family, Republicans faulted Garland for not being more involved in the case. Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), for instance, asked Garland if he was aware prosecutors had not filed certain tax charges against Hunter Biden before it was too late under federal law to do so, citing a complaint from the IRS whistleblowers. Garland said prosecutorial decisions were up to Weiss.
“I have intentionally not involved myself in the facts of the case, not because I’m trying to get out of responsibility, but because I am trying to pursue my responsibility,” Garland said at one point.
The message was lost on Republicans. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) asked Garland if he knew about certain cash transfers connected to Hunter Biden’s business, which Garland said he did not.
“It’s like you’re looking the other way on purpose,” Gaetz said.
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IRS whistleblower’s lawyer calls Hunter Biden lawsuit “frivolous”
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IRS whistleblower’s lawyer calls Hunter Biden lawsuit “frivolous” – CBS News
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Biden faces new pressure after son’s indictment
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Hunter Biden’s lawyer says gun statute “likely unconstitutional”
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Hunter Biden’s lawyer says gun statute “likely unconstitutional” – CBS News
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