I’m having trouble taking Hunter Biden’s “Prosecute My Critics” gambit seriously, for the reasons I related earlier, that Jim lays out in compelling detail, and that Jeff pokes so many holes in that what’s left looks more like Swiss cheese than a legal brief. I am also predisposed not to pay it much mind because, half-baked as it is, I believe — as I’ve contended here — that this victim-card playing is intended as a distraction from the main issue, which is Joe Biden, not Hunter Biden.
Still, two other things occurred to me that are worth putting on the table.
First, if Hunter and his lawyers really believed a criminally actionable theft of the maybe-his-but-maybe-not-his laptop data took place, then he would surely have grounds for civil lawsuit against his alleged tormentors. Such suits would not only have held the possibility of money damages (and for the Bidens, a payday is never an off-day); they would also be easier to prove than a criminal case, the evidentiary burden being considerably less demanding (mere preponderance, rather than proof beyond a reasonable doubt). Yet, unless the whole country has missed the story, Hunter Biden never filed a lawsuit alleging property theft against John Paul Mac Isaac (the computer repairman with whom the erratic, unstable Hunter left, then abandoned, his laptop), or against Trump allies Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani (who are said to have labored to publicize the contents of the laptop). The usual statute of limitations for such claims is two years, so interesting that he waited to start agitating until the time for suing lapsed.
Aside from what appears to be the lack of a case, Hunter presumably did not sue because that would have opened him up to extensive discovery and testimony. But he’d also be a necessary witness in any criminal prosecution. It appears, then, that he’s banging on about getting his nemeses prosecuted because he knows no prosecutor is going to pay any attention — would you be tripping over yourself to indict a case in which Hunter is your main witness?
This is a publicity stunt, not a serious legal strategy.
Second, Hunter is pushing for an investigation and prosecution of Rudy Giuliani. But Justice Department prosecutors from my old office, the famously aggressive Southern District of New York (SDNY), just conducted a lengthy investigation of Giuliani. The probe focused on his efforts to get Ukrainian authorities to investigate Hunter and Joe Biden, and in the course of it prosecutors took the drastic step of searching Giuliani’s residence and seizing his computers and communication devices. Yet, in the end, the SDNY closed the investigation in late 2022 without charges.
If Giuliani committed actionable theft of Hunter Biden’s laptop, do you think that escaped the attention of the SDNY prosecutors who were scrutinizing his anti-Biden campaign?