During Hunter Biden’s forthcoming trial on felony gun charges, special counsel David Weiss intends to present the laptop, which is notoriously associated with the senator, as evidence.
The goals of Weiss were laid forth in a court document that was filed on Wednesday. In the same document, he attacked the attorneys for Hunter Biden for casting doubt on the laptop’s legitimacy, describing their actions as a “conspiracy theory.”
From the 2020 election onward, the laptop has been the subject of a political and judicial drama. President Joe Biden’s son, Joe Biden Jr., has been the target of attacks from right-wing media and Republican politicians who have used the laptop’s humiliating photos and emails as cover. A computer repair shop owner was sued by Hunter Biden’s legal team after the data were allegedly modified and made public.
On Wednesday, prosecutors stated that the laptop belonging to the defendant is authentic and will be presented as evidence during the trial. They also claimed that it contains substantial proof of the defendant’s guilt.
In 2018, Weiss asserts that Biden violated federal law by purchasing a gun, and he intends to utilize the laptop to bolster his narrow assertion that Biden was addicted to illegal substances. Republicans have claimed, without evidence, that Biden and his father were involved in corrupt foreign agreements, and Weiss has yet to respond to this unsubstantiated claim.
For all three firearms charges, Biden has entered a not guilty plea. The federal court in Delaware has scheduled the trial to commence on June 3.
If Weiss raises the matter of the laptop’s legitimacy during trial, Hunter Biden’s attorneys have stated in their own court documents from earlier this week that they intend to question its authenticity.
His legal team stated, “Defense counsel has numerous reasons to believe the data had been altered and compromised before investigators obtained the electronic material.”
At a repair shop in Delaware in April 2019, Biden left the laptop. According to his attorneys, the store owner confessed in his memoir that he “began accessing sensitive, private material in the data” immediately and may have continued to manipulate the data for the five months preceding the FBI’s seizure of the device. Thus, their legal action was justified.
On the other hand, the prosecution claims that witnesses who conversed with Biden will come forward to testify and confirm the authenticity of the texts. In addition, they claim that the contents of the laptop are just a small sample of the digital evidence they have gathered against Biden, which includes texts that were subpoenaed from Apple.
In a brief on Wednesday, Weiss’s team maintained that their client had failed to prove that any of the material presented in the case was untrustworthy or inauthentic. “On the contrary, there is no evidence to back up the defendant’s theory regarding the laptop; it is more akin to a conspiracy theory.”
Not the files that the owner of the repair shop made public or that news outlets obtained “after who-knows-what was added.” Instead, the prosecutor claims that the relevant laptop materials are “extractions by an FBI forensic specialist which were extracted after a technical examination of the laptop in 2019.”
Numerous Trump-friendly media outlets have published a torrent of content from the laptop since 2020. This content includes photographs of Biden using drugs in hotel rooms and sexually filthy films of him with women. The laptop’s emails, financial records, and other papers have also been made public by these outlets, detailing profitable international business deals in China, Ukraine, and other countries.
According to the prosecution, Biden need to speak out against the use of outside addiction specialists.
The president’s son plans to bring various expert witnesses to testify at trial, including a clinical researcher specializing in addiction treatment; however, prosecutors have requested the court presiding over the gun case to reject all of these witnesses on Wednesday.
Claims that Biden, as a user of illicit drugs, intentionally made false claims while obtaining a handgun center on his mental condition.
No word from his lawyers yet on whether he plans to testify against himself.
According to the prosecution, the witness’s statements constitute “an attempt to substitute the testimony of an expert for the testimony of” the accused.
On one hand, defense lawyers want the doctor to testify about addiction disorders and how people understand their own addiction. On the other hand, prosecutors argue that the expert’s opinion about Hunter Biden’s mental state at the time of the alleged crime should not be allowed in a criminal trial.
“Take the stand and testify or introduce other admissible evidence that reflects his state of mind at the time if the defendants (wants) the jury to know what he thought about his own addiction or drug use,” prosecutors wrote, urging the defendant to respond. “He can’t afford to have a professional handle it.”
Additionally, prosecutors are opposed to defense attorneys bringing in forensic toxicologists and experts in handwriting signatures because they could cast doubt on the evidence surrounding the purported cocaine residue discovered on Biden’s gun pouch.
The case’s presiding federal judge, Maryellen Noreika, has not yet announced a ruling on the pretrial motions concerning expert witnesses and the proper way to discuss the laptop with the jury.
