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Hunter Biden says Republicans 'trying to kill me' to hurt president (www.bbc.com)

submitted 7 months ago by inclementimmigrant to c/politics

37 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"They are trying to, in their most illegitimate ... but rational way, they're trying to destroy a presidency," he said in the episode of Moby Pod.

"What they're trying to do is they're trying to kill me, knowing that it will be a pain greater than my father could be able to handle, and so therefore destroying a presidency in that way," he said, adding that they want him to relapse to drug abuse.

"It's not about me," he continued, adding that "these people are just sad, very, very sick people that have most likely just faced traumas in their lives that they've decided that they are going to turn into an evil that they decide that they're going to inflict on the rest of the world". He also accused conservative news outlets of "harassing" him.

Mr Biden added: "I'm gonna survive it clean and sober, is because I am not gonna let these [expletive], OK, use me as just another example of why people in recovery are never gonna be OK, never to be trusted, they're all degenerates."

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[–] Boddhisatva 49 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Indeed there should be consistency. What would normally happen in this situation was what would have happened if the judge hadn't blocked the original plea deal.

The office of the US attorney of Delaware, David Weiss, has been investigating Hunter Biden since 2018 over potential violations of tax and gun laws. Weiss, who was appointed by Donald Trump, announced last month that his office had reached an agreement with Hunter Biden in which the president’s son would plead guilty to two federal misdemeanor tax violations while entering a pre-trial diversion program on a separate felony gun charge.

But the judge, another Trump appointee, no doubt saw the same opportunity that the GOP in congress did and rejected the plea deal. Because Hunter Biden is the son of the current Democratic president, he is not getting the same treatment that anyone else would have gotten in this situation.

Despite Republicans’ gripes, a number of legal experts have framed Hunter Biden’s indictment as unusually harsh, given that prosecutors rarely bring such gun charges. The law underlying one of the three criminal counts is also now facing legal challenges after the supreme court’s recent expansion of second amendment rights.

In fact, the law about drug users being in possession of firearms is one that has been effectively ruled unconstitutional in the fifth circuit thanks to challenges to it and recent SCOTUS rulings.

Those recent rulings include an August decision from the New Orleans-based US court of appeals for the fifth circuit that challenged the law barring users of illegal drugs from possessing firearms. The conservative-leaning court ruled that the supreme court’s decision last year in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc v Bruen, which established a new standard for reviewing firearm regulations in a historical context, rendered the 1968 law unconstitutional.

“In short, our history and tradition may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage,” Judge Jerry Smith wrote in the ruling. “Nor do more generalized traditions of disarming dangerous persons support this restriction on nonviolent drug users.”

Also...

A separate case considered by the third circuit, which does cover Delaware, could also have some bearing on Hunter Biden’s case. In Range v Attorney General, the third circuit issued what the judges called a “narrow” decision indicating that the federal government cannot ban people convicted of non-violent crimes from possessing guns.

Republicans want the law overturned but not until Hunter is convicted and sentenced for it. That is not consistent application of the law, that is political gamesmanship.