Hunter Archives - Home Safety Tech Pros

Hunter Biden warned of ‘real’ Trump threat before pardon

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 09:22:11 +0000

Left: President Joe Biden talks with his son Hunter Biden as he arrives at Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Del., Tuesday, June 11, 2024. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta). Right: Former President Donald Trump waits for the start of proceedings in his trial at Manhattan criminal court, Tuesday, May 14, 2024, in New York. (AP Photo/Craig Ruttle, Pool)

Hunter Biden’s legal team released a report over the weekend that included a “stark warning” that the first son may face retribution at the hands of incoming President-elect Donald Trump. With the election of the 45th and soon-to-be 47th president, the “threat against Hunter is real,” his lawyers claim. The report was released on Saturday ahead of President Joe Biden issuing a full federal pardon for his son on Sunday night.

The 52-page report, obtained by the Washington Post and Washington Examiner, laid out the criminal prosecutions that led to convictions for Hunter Biden.

“Here, in one place, is the complete and reprehensible history of the political persecution of Hunter Biden,” one of Biden’s lawyers, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement. “This is a seven-year saga propelled by an unrelenting political desire to use a son to hurt his father.”

More coverage from Law&Crime: ‘Unprofessional and unwarranted hostility’: Ex-Overstock CEO says Hunter Biden’s request for sanctions violates court rules and is ‘factually and legally baseless’

With Trump coming to power in January, things could have become dicey for the president’s son if he weren’t pardoned. Per the Post, the report contains a timeline of the allegations against Hunter Biden.

“It is a wild and terrifying story that serves as a stark warning of what is to come as some of the same Republicans who targeted Hunter prepare to resume power and have stated their intention to use the government’s vast power to pursue their perceived enemies,” Lowell said.

Hunter Biden could have faced serious jail time for crimes ordinary citizens would not be prosecuted, his lawyers argue.

“There is no disputing that Trump has said his enemies list includes Hunter,” the report says, according to the Post. “The prospect that Trump will turn his vengeance on the Special Counsel prosecutors if they fail to take a harder line against Hunter no doubt exerts considerable pressure on them not to let up on Hunter.”

The document also pointed out that Biden suffered from addiction at the time of his criminal activity.

“A system that is supposed to protect against abuses failed to do so and was corrupted by political leaders in this country,” the document reportedly said. “As a result, Hunter faces significant sentences for felonies and misdemeanors far beyond precedents of others committing less serious offenses or where civil resolutions or consent judgments are normally sought — all on the basis of his mistakes, made while in the throes of serious drug addiction.”

As Law&Crime previously reported, Biden was convicted in June of three felonies relating to gun possession dating back to 2018.He’s slated to be sentenced on that case in the coming weeks.

In 2023, it had appeared that Biden’s tax and gun charges would be resolved by a plea agreement, but when that deal fell apart, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David C. Weiss as special counsel, soon after leading to separate indictments on the West Coast and East Coast.

Then in September, Biden pleaded guilty to nine tax offenses in a California federal court. He was charged last year on nine tax-related accounts, including an accusation that he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes from 2016 through 2019.

In the gun case, the first charged count alleged that Biden “knowingly made a false and fictitious written statement, intended and likely to deceive” StarQuest Shooters & Survival Supply to obtain a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver, averring that he was not an “unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false an fictitious.”

The second count alleged that Biden falsely “certified” to the ATF on “Form 4473” that he was not an unlawful user of or addicted to drugs by checking the boxes “no.”

The third count alleged that Biden illegally possessed the revolver from Oct. 12, 2018 to Oct. 23, 2018, an 11-day period, while “knowing” that he was an unlawful user of or addicted to drugs.

Jurors heard that Hallie Biden, Beau Biden’s widow and the subsequent girlfriend of Hunter Biden, on Oct. 23, 2018, tossed the firearm in the garbage behind a grocery store located across the street from a high school in Delaware, but when she and Hunter went back to the scene later to retrieve the gun, it was gone. The gun was recovered and turned in days later by a man who had sifted through trash, Politico reported. No state charges were brought, but the federal case against Hunter did eventually come.

The jury also heard from the defendant’s ex-wife Kathleen Buhle, who reportedly testified about finding drug paraphernalia in Hunter’s car in 2018, not knowing exactly when that year this allegedly took place. Biden ex-girlfriend Zoe Kestan, CNN additionally reported, testified that she saw Hunter smoking crack the month before he bought the revolver.

The defense maintained that, despite its client’s published crack addiction admissions, that the prosecution did not have solid proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Hunter Biden, a trained lawyer, “knowingly” viewed himself as an addict after exiting rehab and buying the revolver at issue by lying. A jury quickly convicted Biden.

Marisa Sarnoff and Matt Naham contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: This story now includes updated information that President Biden issued a pardon to his son.

Source link

The post Hunter Biden warned of ‘real’ Trump threat before pardon appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Ex-Overstock CEO rubbishes Hunter Biden’s sanctions request

homesafetytechpros — Sun, 24 Nov 2024 15:51:12 +0000

Left: Patrick Byrne, the former chief executive of Overstock.com and an ally of former President Donald Trump, takes a break from being questioned by the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attacks, in Washington, Friday, July 15, 2022 (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite). Right: FILE — Hunter Biden departs from federal court June 11, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum).

A certain level of mystery has been injected into a long-running lawsuit between former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and Hunter Biden in a flurry of back-and-forth motions filed on Friday. Still, the animus in the case is clear.

The precise nature of the latest legal dispute is necessarily being kept under wraps because of how the motions practice occurred.

Attorneys for the presidential son filed an ex parte motion “for an Order Granting Sanctions Against Defendant and/or an Adverse Inference Instruction” under seal along with 26 exhibits.

The businessman’s attorney quickly fired back to protest the request and the approach taken by the plaintiff in an opposition motion.

Filing a motion ex parte is a way for a litigant to quickly get a request or information before a court without giving the other party notice — and without providing the other side their concomitant opportunity to oppose whatever is being requested of, or shown to, the court.

In other words, ex-parte requests are typically viewed as aggressive.

“Defendant Patrick Byrne, by and through his attorneys of record, hereby objects to and opposes Plaintiff’s ex parte application,” the defendant’s response — originally filed under seal as well — reads. “Plaintiff’s Ex Parte application is factually and legally baseless.”

While Biden’s team filed the sanctions request under seal, the docket shows the motion references a stipulated protective order agreed upon by both sides in August as well as a rejected request for an additional protective order filed by the defendant in early November.

The rejected request had to do with deposition-related travel — but the minutes of the court hearing describing how the issue was discussed and decided are largely redacted. The record is clear, however, that Byrne aimed to limit his travel and asked the court to bless that effort.

Now, Biden’s team appears frustrated with something related to the knock-on effects of both the protective order that was granted and/or the deposition-travel-related request that was denied. So, they are asking for sanctions and for the court to issue an adverse inference that can be used against Byrne during trial.

This request, while again mysterious, would almost seem to suggest that Biden believes Byrne or his attorney have violated some kind of rule in one of the orders, or a local court rule, or similar.

Byrne’s team rubbishes the latest dustup as a bout of brinkmanship that is, itself, in violation of the court rules.

“Plaintiff’s Ex Parte Application violates the court’s Civility and Professional Rule A4 in that the Ex Parte Application is being brought to harass the Defendant and his counsel and is being used as a bad faith litigation tactic to disrupt the work Defendant and his counsel are trying to do to timely comply with the court’s pretrial order deadlines,” the opposition motion reads.

The filing goes on to outline several additional rules and orders allegedly violated by the ex parte request and says Biden’s effort amounts to “unprofessional and unwarranted hostility towards the Defendant.”

“Plaintiff’s Ex Parte Application is also baseless because there is no good cause for the court to grant it because there is no emergency, and Plaintiff will not suffer irreparable injury if the court does not grant it,” Byrne’s motion continues.

More Law&Crime coverage: Ex-Overstock CEO says Hunter Biden is basically just calling him ‘a right-wing nutjob’ in order to keep his Iran-themed defamation lawsuit afloat

Earlier this week, Byrne’s attorney filed a declaration complaining that Biden’s legal team gave the defense some “543 pages of documents” that were not previously disclosed, not on a list of proposed trial exhibits, and, in deadline terms, “past the discovery cut off.”

Biden’s attorneys, in response, said Byrne’s attorney got it wrong — and protests far too much about the documents themselves.

In the underlying lawsuit, Biden claims Byrne defamed him during a June 2023 interview — and then again in October 2023.

Biden says Byrne made false claims that he and his family solicited bribes from the Islamic Republic of Iran in exchange for the Biden administration releasing billions of frozen Iranian funds and for adopting a pro-Iranian position during “nuclear talks.”

Trial in the matter is slated to begin on Dec. 10.

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

Source link

The post Ex-Overstock CEO rubbishes Hunter Biden’s sanctions request appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Hunter Biden lawsuit against IRS over tax info moves forward

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 30 Sep 2024 23:16:29 +0000

FILE — Hunter Biden departs from federal court June 11, 2024, in Wilmington, Del. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum).

Hunter Biden’s lawsuit over the public disclosure of his tax return information will move forward after a federal judge finds that the IRS might be liable for the actions of two whistleblowers’ lawyers.

As Law&Crime previously reported, Biden sued the IRS in September 2023, alleging that two agents, Gary Shapley and Joseph Ziegler, “completely disregarded their confidentiality obligations” and engaged in a “campaign to publicly smear” Biden through “unauthorized” disclosures of tax return information to media outlets, resulting in an “assault” on his privacy rights.

President Joe Biden’s son argued that Shapley and Ziegler directed their lawyers to publicly share Biden’s tax information, and were therefore subject to laws against disclosure.

The federal agency filed a motion to dismiss in February, arguing that Biden failed to show the agency’s alleged lack of “safeguards” to prevent two whistleblowers and their attorneys from disclosing his “confidential tax return information” in media interviews caused him to suffer “actual damages.” Lawyers for the IRS also argued that sovereign immunity protects the IRS against lawsuits over disclosures made by nonemployees of the federal government — in this case, lawyers for Shapley and Ziegler.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Rudolph Contreras, a Barack Obama appointee, said that Biden’s unlawful disclosure claim can stand, finding that “the lawyers’ actions can be imputed to the IRS employees — and therefore the United States — under general principles of agency law.”

Historically, Congress “intended taxpayers’ return information to be broadly protected from disclosure to prevent abuse by Executive officers and politicization of the voluntary assessment system,” Contreras wrote. “The evolution of these statutes additionally demonstrates that Congress specifically decided that civil liability for federal employees’ unlawful activity should lie against the federal government and not against the employees themselves.”

The judge also denied a motion to intervene filed on behalf of Shapley and Ziegler themselves, who argued that their alleged actions were legal under whistleblower protection laws and that Biden’s confidential return information was already in the public domain. The intervention request was opposed by both Biden and the IRS.

“The Court agrees with the parties that the IRS agents do not have a legally protected interest in the outcome of this litigation,” Contreras wrote. The judge said that Shapley and Ziegler were not, as they argued, “the real subject” of Biden’s lawsuit.

“The real subject of this controversy is the United States’s liability under 26 U.S.C. § 7431(a)(1), and resolution of that dispute will have no direct impact on the intervenors’ legally protected financial or property interests,” the judge wrote.

It wasn’t all bad news for the IRS: Contreras handed a victory to the agency by granting its request to dismiss Biden’s privacy claim, finding that Biden hadn’t properly pled actual damages, and his claim wasn’t within the Privacy Act’s waiver of sovereign immunity.

Read the judge’s ruling here.

Law&Crime’s Matt Naham contributed to this story.

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

Source link

The post Hunter Biden lawsuit against IRS over tax info moves forward appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Hunter Valley Mountain Access Road closed due to fire restrictions in the Mother Lode Field Office

homesafetytechpros — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 08:35:24 +0000

EL DORADO HILLS, Calif. — The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Mother Lode Field Office is temporarily closing motorized vehicle access to the Hunter Valley Mountain Access Road in Mariposa County, where it crosses onto BLM lands, approximately one mile from the junction of Hunter Valley Mountain Access Road with Bear Valley Road. The closure is effective today, Thursday, August 15, and will be in effect until fire restrictions are lifted for the season. The closure of the Hunter Valley Mountain Access Road is not to be confused with the Hunter Valley Road which remains open. The Hunter Valley Road is located approximately two miles east of the Hunter Valley Mountain Access Road along Bear Valley Road. The temporary closure order can be found on the BLM website.

“This closure is necessary to protect public health and safety; and prevent wildfire,” said Mother Lode Field Manager Jeff Horn. During the recent Pedro Fire, which burned BLM lands along the northern portion of the Hunter Valley Mountain Access Road, it was discovered that target shooting was occurring in multiple locations along this road. Target shooting is not permitted during fire restrictions because hot bullet fragments, exploding targets and metal from recreational shooting can spark a wildfire.

The temporary closure on Hunter Valley Mountain Access Road will remain in effect until seasonal fire restrictions are rescinded.

Visit www.wheretoshoot.org for alternative recreational target shooting locations. To learn how you can do your part to prevent wildland fires visit www.readyforwildfire.org. Fire restrictions for all California BLM-managed public lands can be found on online. For more information, please visit the Mother Lode Field Office website or call 916-941-3101.

Source link

The post Hunter Valley Mountain Access Road closed due to fire restrictions in the Mother Lode Field Office appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

Federal gun charge trial for Hunter Biden set for June 3

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 14 Mar 2024 03:58:49 +0000

Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, with attorney Abbe Lowell, left, leaves after a closed-door deposition in the Republican-led investigation into the Biden family, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Feb. 28, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

The federal gun charge trial for Hunter Biden is set for June 3.

A federal judge in Delaware set aside the weeks of June 3 and June 10 for a jury trial, the court docket said.

CBS News reported that the judge is reviewing motions, including one by Hunter Biden to dismiss the case, and will issue a ruling later. Hunter Biden’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said he does not expect the case to go to trial, telling the network he thinks the judge will dismiss it based on diversion and a plea agreement.

The president’s son was indicted last September on charges related to his purchase of a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver from a federally licensed firearms dealer on Oct. 12, 2018, when he was using drugs, Law&Crime reported. Authorities allege he made a false written statement on a federal form when he bought it, allegedly certifying he was not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.

As Law&Crime reported this week, he offered the judge in his case additional authorities to support his attempt to torpedo the case as selectively and vindictively brought by special counsel David Weiss, whom the defendant likened to a tool of Russian intelligence.

Pointing to erstwhile FBI informant Alexander Smirnov’s February indictment for making allegedly “false bribery allegations” against Joe Biden and Hunter Biden, the president’s son asserted Weiss knew for years that the claims were “baseless” but reopened an investigation after pressure from congressional Republicans and, just a short time later, after prosecutors reneged on a plea agreement, Weiss was appointed as special counsel and only ramped up his probe to secure bicoastal indictments for gun and tax offenses.

Hunter Biden, 54, who struggled with addiction to alcohol and crack cocaine, has been under the spotlight.

Federal prosecutors have been investigating his finances. Senate Republicans have subjected him to immense scrutiny, opening several investigations into his overseas business dealings, specifically his work on the board of Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma Holdings.

Law&Crime’s Matt Naham and Jerry Lambe contributed to this report.

Have a tip we should know? [email protected]

Source link

The post Federal gun charge trial for Hunter Biden set for June 3 appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.

New details emerge in GOP probe of Hunter and James Biden

homesafetytechpros — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 00:10:46 +0000

New details emerge in GOP probe of Hunter and James Biden – CBS News

Watch CBS News

CBS News has learned that more than 150 transactions involving either Hunter or James Biden’s global business affairs were flagged for further review by U.S. banks. Catherine Herridge spoke with a top Republican senator who’s investigating the business dealings.

Source link

The post New details emerge in GOP probe of Hunter and James Biden appeared first on Home Safety Tech Pros.