'I've never seen that': Legal analysts claim 'retaliatory' prosecutors are 'throwing the book' at Hunter Biden
September 14, 2023
Legal analysts were puzzled by the gun charges filed against President Joe Biden's son Hunter as he was indicted Thursday, saying it appeared the same charge appeared three times for a single incident.
“It is three identical charges saying the exact same thing," FBI general counsel Andrew Weissmann told MSNBC.
Biden was hit with the gun charges that related to a question on a form that's filled out when somebody buys a gun. It asks if the applicant is an unlawful user of an illegal substance. Biden, who is known to have abused drugs, apparently exposed that he lied on the form in a book he wrote.
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"The 3 false statement charges against Hunter Biden are a raw deal," said former federal prosecutor Harry Litman. "There appears to be nothing that happened since the plea deal unraveled (through no fault of Biden) other than Republican ignorant potshots. And it's a freestanding charge that DOJ basically never brings."
Biden was charged earlier in the year with the gun crime and with tax evasion. A plea deal in which he would plead guilty to tax evasion and have the gun charge deferred was agreed, but it fell apart when the judge became concerned about the terms of the agreement. Republicans also complained that he was getting favorable treatment.
MSNBC's Lisa Rubin suggested that the prosecutors were "making a statement" in filing strong charges.
"I'm old enough to remember when Jared Kushner lied on his SF86 and got away with it" recalled Bradley Moss, referring to Kushner lying on security clearance forms.
NBC Supreme Court reporter Lawrence Hurley pointed to pro-gun groups refusing to come to Biden's side in his right to own a gun.
"So long as this President continues to use every tool at his disposal to harass and criminalize guns ... his son should be receiving the same treatment and scrutiny as all of us," said the Gun Owners of America.
Weissmann referred back to Amy Coney Barrett's confirmation hearing to the Supreme Court in which she suggested the law being applied to Biden is unconstitutional.
"She thinks that this statute that bars certain people from carrying guns violates the Second Amendment, and the Supreme Court is going to be deciding that issue," said Weissmann. "That's not what's charged here, though. This is not a crime saying that Hunter Biden did not have the right to own the gun. It was that he lied on a form. And so that's a slightly different charge than he was not allowed to possess the gun. This is about lying in connection with the gun.
"If it turns out that the underlying crime of possessing the gun is unconstitutional, which is what the Supreme Court is going to be deciding, then I think the argument you're going to hear about whether he lied or didn't lie is irrelevant because he constitutionally could obtain this gun," said Weissmann.
"I think it was -- it may have been the former U.S. Attorney Lamb who said, and I agree, when you see this charge, which is very rare, it's usually an addition when somebody's being charged with other things, and that's not what's happening here," Weissmann later explained.
"And so it is an extremely rare crime in my experience to see. Of course, I was in New York and in D.C.. where basically there were a lot of other and bigger kinds, and maybe in smaller jurisdictions this is more common. But I do think that you're going to be hearing a lot about that from the defense because it's hard to see that they won't make that argument."
It was something former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega posted that she also hasn't seen, much less heard of.
"I was a fed'l l prosecutor for 20+ yrs," she wrote on the social media site previously known as Twitter. And "did quite a few ATF cases, esp early on. I was also a supervisor for about 5 yrs, so I knew of all cases in our office. Not only have I never seen this statute charged, I never even HEARD of it until recently relative to Hunter Biden."
He also explained that the charges seem "retaliatory" and over the top. In his entire career, he said he's never once seen this.
"The first challenge is going to be now they've charged it as three felonies, but a month ago they were willing to not charge this at all, to defer it," he said. "The claim is going to be it's barred by the agreement, the private agreement between the parties. The second argument I think you're going to see is selective prosecution. This is really just retaliatory action for an agreement that fell apart and in many ways because the government put in a number of provisions that the court took issue with, and now they're throwing the book at him in a way that's really abusive, that this would not happen to anyone else."
"There's no real downside to them bringing that argument about selective prosecution and retaliation in this case," he later added.
See the video of the discussion below or at the link here.
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