If you thought the Manhattan “falsified records” trial of President Trump got into some uncomfortable territory, Hunter Biden’s trial on gun charges before Judge Maryellen Noreika is an R-rated soap opera, with wife, ex-wife, girlfriends, mom and sister all in the courtroom.  But in this case, the questioning is warranted, as it’s one way the prosecution can establish what defense attorney Abbe Lowell has said it must: the time of Hunter’s drug use relative to the time he bought the gun.   

Judge Jeanine Pirro, speaking on Wednesday’s THE FIVE, said she thought Day 3 had gone very well for the prosecution and that the case should be over by next Tuesday or Wednesday.  “This is not a complicated case at all,” she said.  The circumstantial evidence is “tremendous,” and there’s more testimony coming.

“The shame of this whole thing,” she said, “is there should have been a plea bargain here.”  Hunter didn’t get one because the “sweetheart” deal he originally got fell apart after the judge questioned its incredible terms, which in Pirro’s words “gave him immunity for the rest of his life.”

For evidence, they’ve got Hunter’s own words --- in his own voice, from the audio track of his book --- saying that he was using crack.  In October 2018, according to the book, all he was thinking about was where he could get some crack.  They also had testimony from his longsuffering first wife about raising their kids while married to an addict.  A stripper companion who took the stand said he had “smoked crack every 20 minutes” while they were together.  And apparently there’s much more to come.

The guy was apparently on drugs constantly.  “I mean, this is about as clear as it gets,” Pirro said.

The one thing jurors have to decide, she said bluntly, is “whether not they want to convict him.”  Will they choose to use jury nullification of the law in this case?  Will they just feel so sorry for Hunter that they can’t convict him?  And was holding the trial there in Wilmington, where so many people know the Bidens, a factor in this?  To be sure, defense attorney Abbe Lowell will exploit this emotional angle as much as he possibly can.  He laid the groundwork for this in his opening statement, in which he tried to get sympathy for Hunter as someone who was dealing with a lot of personal pain, including the death from brain cancer of his older brother Beau.  So get ready for more.

But the evidence is there, beyond a reasonable doubt.  Judge Pirro predicts that “all Abbe Lowell’s defenses will be blown away.”

It should be noted, though, that this is the one case they can bring against Hunter that doesn’t tie in with his father’s potential crimes, in that it doesn’t touch on family business or finance at all.  In fact, this case is actually doing President Biden a favor, by pulling focus from the allegations against him and from everything else that’s increasingly putting him in a bad light, such as his disastrous polling and now-painfully obvious cognitive frailties.  Come on, let’s forget about all that and talk about the Hunter case for a while!  It helps, at least a little, to distract the media from dwelling on stories like this in the NEW YORK POST, the one that says “Biden’s not the same person.”

https://nypost.com/2024/06/04/us-news/biden-showing-signs-of-decline-as-pols-aides-detail-81-year-olds-slipping-cognitive-fitness

As Greg Gutfeld said Wednesday, Hunter is “taking one for the team,” to make it look as though there’s equal justice after Trump’s trial while having “no blowback on The Big Guy.”  He predicted Hunter would walk.

The NEW YORK SUN has an excellent piece about the Hunter trial, forecasting an “all-out assault” on federal investigators’ methods by defense attorney Abbe Lowell.  Lowell will argue that the prosecution has no proof that Hunter was addicted, or thought he was, to crack cocaine at the “moment” he bought the gun.  (Hey, maybe it was just alcohol at that “moment,” Lowell has suggested, and the gun purchase form asked nothing about alcohol.)  Read about his questioning of FBI Special Agent Erika Jensen, a 20-year veteran of the Bureau, and you’ll get a good idea of just how aggressive this defense will be, no matter how cut-and-dried the evidence seems.

The NY SUN is normally subscription-only, but this particular piece should be free to read…

https://www.nysun.com/article/hunter-bidens-lawyer-prepares-for-an-all-out-assault-on-federal-investigators-methods-in-hopes-of-saving-the-first-son

Jonathan Turley also suggests that Lowell is pursuing a jury nullification strategy.  “It is not clear that it will work in an otherwise open-and-shut case,” he says, “but it might.”  Lowell is doing this because “it may be all that Biden has, short of the Rapture.”

“Hunter wrote [in his book] how he was a user of a wide array of drugs for years,” Turley says.  “It’s hard to imagine he thought of himself as clean as a clergyman in Wilmington in 2018.”

So, why wouldn’t Hunter just plead guilty (with a new, more reasonable plea agreement) and save his family this embarrassing trial?  His dad could even pardon him!  Turley thinks that in Delaware, also known as “Biden Country,” the defense will push for jury nullification, which would be banned or discouraged in many courtrooms.  “Biden’s case has all of the characteristics of a nullification defense,” Turley writes.  “Even if he cannot secure acquittal, the combination of political and social elements at play in Delaware could produce a hung jury.”

In our current “justice” system, it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the conditions here seem to be the opposite of those for Trump’s trial.  The Manhattan jury pool for Trump’s case was overwhelmingly Democrat, but Wilmington is portrayed like an extended Biden family.  In Wilmington in 2020, Biden received 26,698 votes, while Trump got 3,580.  So even with a clearly stated crime and hard evidence, Hunter’s conviction is by no means a done deal.

https://jonathanturley.org/2024/06/05/is-hunter-biden-pursuing-a-jury-nullification-strategy/

Related: Kat Timpf made an interesting point on “Gutfeld” that Hunter’s attorney could argue that the background check law is unconstitutional because the Second Amendment right oto bear arms doesn’t include an exemption for drug addicts. But that would require a Biden attorney to cite the Second Amendment to challenge a gun control law, so it would probably never happen.