Hunter Biden was found guilty of falsely claiming to be drug-free when applying to buy a handgun six years ago, adding to his family’s personal turmoil as his father President Biden campaigns for re-election.
The younger Biden, 54 years old, was convicted by a federal jury in a case that exposed a dark period of betrayal and substance abuse in the Biden family.
The jury found that when Hunter bought a .38-caliber Colt Cobra revolver in October 2018, he lied on a federal form by checking a box to say he wasn’t addicted to or using drugs at the time. During a week of trial proceedings, jurors heard about his yearslong struggle to stay sober, including evidence that he bought and used drugs in the weeks before and the days after he purchased the firearm from a gun shop in his hometown of Wilmington.
The younger Biden faces up to 25 years behind bars, although any prison term is likely to amount to a fraction of that maximum sentence.
The conviction and prospect of prison time deepens the political peril for his father during the middle of November’s election cycle. The trial in Delaware aired embarrassing details about the president’s family, and Hunter Biden is expected to face another trial on tax charges in Los Angeles in September, which could feature still more damaging details about his lavish spending and lifestyle. His wider legal problems have given Republicans an opening to portray the Biden family as corrupt, though they have failed to link the president to any wrongdoing.
President Biden has said he wouldn’t pardon his son but has otherwise stood by him, issuing a statement saying he was “so proud of the man” Hunter Biden is now.
Hunter was indicted on the gun charges last year following the collapse of an agreement in which he had been set to plead guilty to a pair of misdemeanor tax charges and avoid prosecution related to the gun purchase. The plea deal disintegrated in stunning fashion after prosecutors and defense lawyers couldn’t overcome differences about the extent of the immunity from potential future charges Biden would receive.
The Question Moderators Must Ask Joe Biden
The upcoming June 27 presidential debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden will be the first of its kind — a former president debating a current president, with a massive list of subjects to animate the discourse. But there is one topic in particular that moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash must bring up if this debate is to have any respectability from the voters: they must confront Joe Biden about his lies in the 2020 debates.
These lies have been acknowledged publicly by Tapper at least, and by Bash to a lesser degree. Namely: that Biden — in the context of leaning on the letter signed by intelligence figures who claimed the Hunter Biden laptop bore the “hallmarks of foreign disinformation” (three and a half years on, there is no evidence of foreign interference with Hunter’s laptop) — said his son had made no money from China or other American adversaries.
Trump, at the time, called out the obvious lies — which have since become undeniable. But President Biden has never answered for his lies in that context. He falsely claimed to the American people that there was no truth to these claims, even while knowing that Hunter had in fact profited greatly from business relationships in all these countries. The question is simple: why did you lie then, and how can we trust that you’re telling the truth now?
Perhaps Joe Biden will claim that he just didn’t know about Hunter’s profit-seeking, even though he was literally doing it on trips where he flew on Air Force Two. Perhaps he will just be in denial about the facts in front of our faces. But it’s a question that we all deserve to have answered — and answered clearly. If the Biden White House is going to maintain this fiction that Hunter did not sell the family name for profit around the globe, they are going to end up in a very isolated position not just in politics but in their own party, which has been loathe to defend the human scum-bucket that Hunter has become.
This is a touchy subject for the president, obviously. He responds constantly via statements that he is proud of his son. But in the very short list of friendly interviews the president has given, he has not once been confronted about his false claims on the debate stage in 2020 — and what he believes and thinks now about the lies he told us. The American people deserve an explanation — and it’s incumbent on Tapper and Bash to raise the question and demand an answer.
The Right Sweeps Europe
Can the “far right” still really be called the “far right” if it becomes the mainstream? That’s a question for political scientists to ponder as Sunday’s European Union elections results came tumbling in.
The right is winning in France, with Marine Le Pen’s National Rally will secure twice as many votes as President Macron’s Renaissance. Macron has already responded to the humiliation by calling for fresh national assembly elections to be held on June 30 and July 7.
In Germany, the AfD, despite a number of scandals, took 16 percent of the vote, making them the second most popular party, ahead of chancellor’s Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats. More than a million people who had voted for the governing coalition have just cast their ballots for AfD, according to one pollster.
By contrast, the German Greens, who usually perform strongly, won just 12 percent of the vote. The center-right Christian Democratic bloc of EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen still came top with 30 percent (her EPP center-right group will be easily the largest in the European Parliament), but only after tacking right on immigration and softening its green policies.
The European Parliament elections are often dismissed as little more than an opinion poll — since the Parliament’s powers are limited and it is the EU Commission which makes the decisions that most affect people’s lives. But the general political direction of the continent is clear: parties that stand strongly against immigration, that embrace anti-globalist rhetoric and reject green ideology are doing well. The Greens are in retreat.
The once-unacceptable right is now in power in Italy, Hungary and Slovakia. It is part of governing coalitions in Sweden (where it is in retreat) and Finland and will be in the Netherlands shortly. It’s leading polls in Belgium and Austria too. After the weekend’s European results, which gave Flemish nationalists a victory, the Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo announced his resignation.
‘I cannot act as if nothing has happened’, said a weary, dejected Emmanuel Macron, in an unplanned address to his nation last night. The French president, bruised by an unprecedented showing for the right-wing populist National Rally (RN) on Sunday’s European Parliament elections, immediately dissolved the French parliament and announced snap legislative elections. The first round will take place in just three weeks’ time.
When Macron was elected president in 2017, he promised the French people that they will ‘no longer have a single reason to vote for the extremes’. Pro-EU centrists hailed his apparent defeat of nationalist, populist forces. Seven years later, RN is on course to achieve its best-ever result in an EU election. Marine Le Pen’s party is projected to win double the vote share of the president’s liberal, centrist Renaissance group. Clearly, the French feel that they have more reasons than ever to revolt against the mainstream.
Unbuttoning his carefully ironed white shirt, Jordan Bardella took a sip of water at a sweltering political rally during his European election campaign and apologised for the pause by saying: “I’m already getting hot.”
“You’re the one making us hot,” screamed a girl from the young crowd.
The French call it “Bardella-mania”.
Wherever the handsome 28-year-old star of France’s hard-Right National Rally (RN) goes, he is mobbed, above all, by the young.
Such adulation morphed into electoral triumph on Sunday when 31.4 per cent of the French voted for Marine Le Pen’s impeccably dressed, carefully groomed and well-spoken protégé, offering his party a projected 30 seats in the European Parliament.
That is more than twice the seats won by Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, which scored a paltry 14.6 per cent (13 seats), and finished only just ahead of the Socialists, on 13.8 per cent.
But it was not just Mr Bardella who was drawing swarms of young voters. Germany’s hard-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) also surged in the polls, propelled in part by voters under the age of 30.
One poll published on Sunday showed that 32 per cent of 18-34 year-olds voted for the RN in France, more than double the total of the 2019 European elections. In Germany, the AfD saw an 11 per cent jump in its vote share among 16-to-24 year-olds, claiming a total of 16 per cent. It saw big jumps in 25-44 year-olds, too.
In the last European election, young people in Europe overwhelmingly voted for green parties in what was heralded as a “green wave.”
However, interest has waned among a generation that grew up during the Covid pandemic and frets about war in Europe, an uncertain job market and a lack of affordable housing.
Trump Struggles With Abortion Issue
Even with his natural supporters.
For all his efforts to avoid the issue and “make both sides happy,” as he has long promised, Trump still got hit by both sides — from Democrats for appearing at all, and from some of his own voters in the room for skirting a topic at the top of their agenda.
“He sounded more like a politician who wants to be elected,” said Rick Patrick, the senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Sylacauga, Alabama. “I voted for him and I plan to vote for him again, but he was not like the other speakers who were here talking about religious things.”
In a pre-taped video address just under two minutes long to the Danbury Institute, which calls abortion “child sacrifice,” Trump did not mention the word “abortion” at all, even though the group’s CEO praised Trump in an introduction for addressing, as president, what he called “the most important issue facing our country and the next generation of our children who are being slaughtered in the womb.”
Instead, Trump told the group, “You just can’t vote Democrat. They’re against religion. They’re against your religion in particular.”
The former president’s brief remarks to the Danbury Institute, on the sidelines of the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, served as the latest example of the tightrope Trump is walking on an issue where polls show he remains vulnerable. Before the address, for which he was billed as a speaker, Trump’s campaign privately cautioned that he would only give a pre-recorded welcome message lasting less than two minutes. His address drew only polite applause and garnered some criticism among anti-abortion Southern Baptist leaders in attendance.
“It’s disappointing because you would hope to have a Republican presidential candidate who speaks strongly that life begins at conception,” said Kevin McClure, an attendee from a Baptist congregation in Louisville who said Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whom he backed in the Republican presidential primary, was a better opponent of abortion rights.
Feature
Joel Kotkin: Are American Jews moving right?
Items of Interest
Foreign
The new populist map of Europe.
Gaza chief: more death helps Hamas.
Netanyahu faces challenges at home as he heads to Congress.
How France’s shy Le Pen voters caused a political earthquake.
Jim Risch demands vote on ICC.
Domestic
House primaries could decide a number of wars on the right.
House Democrats plan resistance playbook if Trump returns.
Merrick Garland defiant after attacks on DOJ.
Martha Alito recorded secretly, says she wants to put up more flags.
Roberts and Alito also recorded secretly at SCOTUS party.
Giuliani booked as he battles Arizona fake electors case.
Pelosi video shows her taking responsibility for January 6th National Guard.
The largest travel store in the world is in Texas.
Lawfare
Hunter Biden trial continues jury deliberations.
Trump felony conviction could lose liquor licenses.
Dispute over ex-DOJ official connections with Allen Bragg.
2024
Biden looks like he freezes at Juneteenth event.
Voters believe Joe Biden’s mental decline is real.
Team Biden bets that Trump will damage himself in debate.
Trump takes a poll ding versus Biden.
Media
Rachel Maddow worried Trump will put her in a camp.
Newsmax plans IPO, 225 million private raise.
Media misleads on abortion referendums.
The Washington Post faces a crossroads.
Health
Headed toward 1 out of 4 people on Ozempic?
Ephemera
Dan Hurley passes on the Lakers — will LeBron follow suit?
The Boys Season 4 premiere is coming.
Will Smith is still a star after Bad Boys 4 opening.
Quote
“Modern man is staggering and losing his balance because he is being pelted with little pieces of alleged fact which are native to the newspapers; and, if they turn out not to be facts, that is still more native to newspapers.”
— G.K. Chesterton