On the 1st day of #testimony in #HunterBiden’s federal #gun trial, #jurors heard his audio of his memoir, where he recounted his #drug use in graphic detail. A federal prosecutor told jurors “no one is above the #law,” & defense said the he did not “knowingly” lie when filling out forms to purchase a weapon.
#HunterBiden had reportedly dropped off the MacBookPro at a computer repair shop in 2019 & never reclaimed it.
The shop owner [for some reason] contacted #Republicanlawmakers & #politicians to review the hundreds of thousands of emails & msgs in the laptop.
An #FBI agent testified that investigators obtained a #warrant to search the laptop’s msgs & “found evidence of addiction.” duh, he’s been VERY open about his struggles w/ [#addiction]
Prosecutors claimed they were attempting to corroborate the battles of #addiction that #HunterBiden described in his memoir w/real-time msgs in his hard drive & iCloud.
#FBI agent Erika Jensen testified that Hunter’s cloud data & laptop held msgs from 2018 which showed drug habits, using codes like “baby powder” & “chore boy” for crack cocaine.
A series of WhatsApp msgs recovered from Biden’s iCloud account were shown to the jury, & appear to show Biden arranging deliveries of drugs.
The #FBI agent said they were able to confirm that the laptop taken from the repair shop was #HunterBiden’s partly from his iCloud data, which contained an invoice from the shop [wait - an invoice for the repair was on the laptop before the work was done? Remember, he never picked it up]
Big show of family support on the 1st day of #HunterBiden’s trial.
In addition to #POTUS’ statement, Hunter’s wife, Melissa Cohen, his sister Ashley Biden, his friend Kevin Morris, Peter Neal, who is married to Hunter’s daughter Naomi, & #FLOTUS Dr. #JillBiden are in attendance.
President #Biden will be in Wilmington, DL, w/no appearances scheduled. But he has given no indication that he would be in the courthouse — a possibility that would require considerable security arrangements.
The 3 felony charges against #HunterBiden stem from a 2018 #gun purchase in #Delaware. He separately faces 9 tax-related federal charges. The #tax case is scheduled to go to trial in Sept in Los Angeles. Hunter is accused of making 2 false statements on the paperwork to purchase the weapon, specifically when he claimed not to be addicted to or using illegal drugs, & unlawfully possessing the gun for 11 days. It’s against the law to possess a weapon while using illegal drugs.
The trial is not televised, & reporters are not permitted to send live updates from the courtroom or the overflow room.
If convicted, the maximum sentence for the most serious #crime in the indictment is 10 yrs in #prison. Under federal sentencing guidelines, however, #HunterBiden — who has no prior felonies & has acknowledged being addicted to drugs at the time of the gun purchase — would probably face less.
Many people, pundits & politicians are comparing & commenting on #HunterBiden’s trial in reference to the #TrumpTrial that concluded w/34 felony guilty convictions last week.
However, there are vast differences in the 2 cases — chief among them that Hunter Biden is NOT running for anything, NOR has he ever held or aspired to hold any ELECTED OFFICE.
Still, #Republicans are certain to seize on these difficult episodes in the Biden family’s past.
Prosecutors plan to use highly personal evidence in #HunterBiden trial
Special counsel #DavidWeiss filings provide a look into prosecutors’ plans & how they may reopen some of the most painful moments in the Biden family’s past.
Court papers detail the depth of family members’ turmoil as they struggled to grapple w/the death of President Biden’s oldest son, Beau, in 2015, and the drug & alcohol #addiction of his younger son, Hunter.
In #HunterBiden’s trial, jury selection highlights #UnitedStates’ drug epidemic
The nation’s political divisions were also laid bare as 6 men & 6 women were chosen…. #JurySelection for the trial of #POTUS#Biden’s son Hunter turned into an impromptu but painful indictment of the nation’s drug epidemic, w/person after person telling the court of their loved ones’ battles w/ #addiction.
Judge Maryellen Noreika swore in 12 #jurors — + 4 alternates — to determine the #legal fate of #HunterBiden, who is on trial for 3 #felony#gun charges….
A substitute #teacher, a fmr #SecretService employee & multiple #GunOwners were among those chosen to report back to court Tues morning, when opening arguments are expected to begin.…Most were people of color, &…appeared to range from mid-20s to 70s.
…The responses of dozens of prospective jurors to questions in open court reflected some of the most pervasive & divisive issues in American society, w/jurors discussing their views on #gun ownership & #mistrust of the #judicial process.
And in a trial where the #criminal defendant has been public about his struggles w/ drug #addiction, the #jurors told the court about similar battles fought by their parents, children & friends.
Many offered their own versions of a written statement from #POTUS#Biden…. He said he found his son’s #recovery from #addiction inspiring & knew that many families of addicts could relate to #HunterBiden’s journey.
“My daughter’s been given a 2nd chance,” said one prospective juror who was not chosen for the panel, but like many others said his experience watching a family member struggle w/drugs would not prevent him from judging Hunter Biden fairly. “Everyone deserves a 2nd chance.”
…Many #jurors said they had read or seen headlines about Hunter Biden’s #gun case over the yrs in local & natl news, but few said they delved into the details. One woman, selected as an alternate, said she first learned #HunterBiden was going to trial on Mon …on her drive over to the courthouse.
She told the court that many of her relatives are gun owners & that she has lost multiple friends to drug #addiction. “I feel it’s an everyday part of the world nowadays,” she said.
Also me: Come on a 12” sony vaio from 2004 for the equivalent of 44$ ? This thing could run 32 bit #HaikuOS . 1.5GHz and 1GB RAM should be enough for everybody.
@santiago yeah, my exactly same problem : #addiction 😂
It's a week that I'm playing with an old ThinkPad with a celeron 500, 64mb ram & win98
Btw congrats for your new computer!
#TheMetalDogArticleList #louder
“I could walk out of here, go get a drink and within a week I could be dead. But I’m not interested in doing that”: how Trent Reznor pulled back from the abyss to make Nine Inch Nails’ Year Zero
In 2007, Nine Inch Nails released their fifth album, Year Zero – and Trent Reznor, the man behind it, had finally thrown off his demons
People in Baltimore have been dying of overdoses at a rate never before seen in a major American city.
The city was once hailed for its response to #addiction. But as #fentanyl flooded streets & ofcls shifted priorities, deaths hit unprecedented heights.
This is the first part in a series exploring #Baltimore’s overdose crisis.
In the past 6 yrs, nearly 6k lives have been lost. The death rate from 2018 to 2022 was nearly DOUBLE that of any other large city, & higher than nearly all of Appalachia during the prescription pill crisis, the Midwest during the height of rural meth labs or New York during the crack epidemic.
A decade ago, 700 fewer people here were being killed by drugs each year. And when fatalities began to rise from the synthetic #opioid#fentanyl, so potent that even minuscule doses are deadly, #Baltimore’s initial response was hailed as a national model. The city set ambitious goals, distributed #Narcan widely, experimented w/ways to steer people into treatment & ratcheted up campaigns to alert the public.
But then city leaders became preoccupied w/other crises, including #GunViolence & the #pandemic. Many of those efforts to fight overdoses stalled….
Health ofcls began publicly sharing less #data. City Council members rarely addressed or inquired about the growing number of #overdoses. The fact that…[it had become]…so much worse…was NOT KNOWN to the mayor, the deputy mayor…or multiple council members until they were recently shown data compiled by Times/Banner reporters….