Don't Celebrate Hunter Biden's Conviction
Hunter's conviction is a great way to show the hypocrisy of unconstitutional gun control laws to and get them changed -- but correcting the course should start with others, not Hunter.
There are bigger things at play here. Lorraine covered the verdict when it dropped, if you want a recap to understand the charges. I’ll explain why celebrations are premature in three points:
This is the easiest case against Hunter and the only case that doesn’t implicate the entire Biden family, particularly President Joe.
The evidence in this case was overwhelming. There even exist texts and bank receipts showing that Hunter withdrew $800 and met his drug dealer behind their usual 7-Eleven hours before buying his gun (the ATM was located at — get this — Rittenhouse Station.)
Hunter is on the hook for tax fraud in California over his failure to pay $1.4 million in taxes while he was buying massive amounts of hookers and blow, although Forbes already warned a year ago to not expect jail time. The IRS investigation plays into the House’s impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden (and really, the whole family) for marching out the VP and WH for personal enrichment — and they just issued criminal referrals to the DOJ against Joe’s brother Jim Biden and Hunter for lying under oath during testimony. The California case implicates Joe and the rest of the family. The gun case did not. That isn’t justice.
It isn’t justice to allow some of Hunter’s criminal behavior expire under statute of limitations while the government, run by his father, dragged its feet; it isn’t justice to allow the expiration of Hunter’s crimes under statute of limitations but resurrect an expired misdemeanor, tie it to a nonexistent misdemeanor, all to move a case against Trump to federal court in New York. It isn’t justice for 51 intelligence officials to sign a letter decrying the laptop as “Russian disinformation” only for it to be later verified and then entered into evidence in this trial. Convicting Hunter on falsifying a federal form related to a gun purchase to which he admitted, in his own words in his memoir, is some big effort of justice?
Meanwhile innocent Dexter Taylor sits in jail waiting for his “justice.”
Don’t be baited into conflating the separate issues of the law’s validity and Democrat hypocrisy on said law.
To say that gun control advocates should live under the laws that they create isn’t an endorsement of those laws, it’s a recognition of their hypocrisy on the issue.
We weren’t the ones who demanded unconstitutional abridgments of our Second Amendment natural rights — that was gun control Democrats for whom Hunter Biden actively fundraised. He was step-by-step with his father on the campaign trail, at fundraisers where gun control was a key issue. We were all called “domestic terrorists” and referred to as “child-killers” for supporting Second Amendment rights. He snorts booger sugar, his lover, Aunt Girlfriend Hallie, tosses it into a trash can across the street from a school, Secret Service finds it, intervenes, but if we demand accountability by the terms they set, then the left claims it’s a betrayal of the Second Amendment to deflect.
Hunter Biden vs the United States?
That’s how this could end up, potentially.
As part of the Seventh Circuit Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted in her Kanter v Barr dissent that nonviolent criminals do not forfeit their Second Amendment natural rights:
History is consistent with common sense: it demonstrates that legislatures have the power to prohibit dangerous people from possessing guns. But that power extends only to people who are dangerous. Founding-era legislatures did not strip felons of the right to bear arms simply because of their status as felons. Nor have the parties introduced any evidence that founding-era legislatures imposed virtue-based restrictions on the right; such restrictions applied to civic rights like voting and jury service, not to individual rights like the right to possess a gun. In 1791— and for well more than a century after-ward—legislatures disqualified categories of people from the right to bear arms only when they judged that doing so was necessary to protect the public safety.
The forthcoming verdict in United States v. Rahimi is about domestic violence restraining orders. One issue being raised per the great Stephen Halbrook:
The gun ban on persons subject to a DVRO is in 18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(8). The very next provision, subparagraph (g)(9), bans gun possession by any person "who has been convicted in any court of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence." Persons challenging the validity of that ban are sure to use Prelogar's concession that one must be a convicted felon to be not "law-abiding." Will the government then argue that such misdemeanants are under the "not responsible, dangerous" category? That seems to be what's left, but by definition a misdemeanor is not a serious crime.
And we are to assume that such misdemeanants are dangerous for life? That's the result, because civil rights are not taken away for a misdemeanor conviction, and hence cannot be restored, which is the requirement for restoration of gun rights under federal law. Only a felon can have civil rights taken away, and thus only a felon can have civil rights restored. That's how the courts have construed the relevant provisions, 18 U.S.C. §§ 921(a)(33)(B)(ii) and 922(g)(9).
I don’t know that I see Hunter Biden appealing this and pursuing it all the way to SCOTUS in a Hunter Biden v. The United States case … at least not anytime near election. He won’t do anything to jeopardize his dad’s chances this fall or look in any way other than a sad, contrite son, but don’t count out privileged Hunter yet. Look for Joe to either pardon or commute his sentence after November, though. That’s a guarantee.
Hunter Biden's conviction is a great way to show the hypocrisy of unconstitutional gun control laws to the unawake and/or partisan and get them changed -- but correcting the course should start with others, like Dexter Taylor, not privileged Hunter.
There's nothing to celebrate. The main events are coming up. Get your popcorn.