Awkward: Hunter Biden’s Defense Invokes Gun Rights Ruling 19 Times After Joe Called It Unconstitutional

Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, is relying on Second Amendment arguments that his father once slammed as “deeply” troubling to escape conviction on gun crimes.

On Monday, attorneys for the president’s son filed a series of motions to dismiss federal charges handed down by Special Counsel David Weiss. Among the charges Biden’s attorneys want thrown out are firearm charges that were filed on the basis of Hunter Biden purchasing a gun as a drug addict. Hunter Biden’s initial sweetheart plea agreement — which was derailed this summer after it fell apart in court — would have forgiven the felony firearm conviction if Hunter maintained 24 months of sobriety.

“Hunter Biden asserts that the gun charges fail as a matter of constitutional law because Congress could not criminalize the possession of a gun by an addict,” explained Federalist Legal Correspondent Margot Cleveland. “And since Congress could not criminalize possession by an addict, it also could not make lying about being an addict a crime. Therefore, Hunter Biden argues the three gun charges fail.”

Hunter Biden’s attorneys cited United States v. Daniels, a 5th Circuit decision in August that reversed the firearm conviction of a non-violent drug user.

“In short, our history and tradition may support some limits on an intoxicated person’s right to carry a weapon, but it does not justify disarming a sober citizen based exclusively on his past drug usage,” the court ruled. “Nor do more generalized traditions of disarming dangerous persons support this restriction on nonviolent drug users.”

“The prosecution charges that Mr. Biden violated a rarely used statute that it claims prevented him from owning a firearm as an unlawful user of a controlled substance,” Hunter Biden’s lawyers wrote in their Monday motion. “But that statute’s status-based prohibition on gun ownership recently was struck down as unconstitutional under the Second Amendment.”

The Daniels decision followed the Supreme Court’s decision in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, a landmark ruling in 2022 that broadly upheld the right to carry a handgun in public.

In another gun rights case that followed Bruen, attorneys for an Oklahoma man who was pulled over with a gun and marijuana in his car “argued the portion of federal firearms law focused on drug users or addicts was not consistent with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation, echoing what the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled last year” in Bruen.

Attorneys for Hunter Biden cited the Supreme Court’s decision in Bruen 19 times in their motion filed on Monday. And yet, when the court handed down the landmark case in June 2022, President Biden said the “ruling contradicts both common sense and the Constitution, and should deeply trouble us all.”

Now, Hunter’s case may further strengthen the Second Amendment protections his father disparaged.

An argument that a ban on drug addicts possessing weapons does NOT violate the Framers' intent of the second amendment can be found in Alexander Hamilton's writings in Federalist #29:

The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year.
But though the scheme of disciplining the whole nation must be abandoned as mischievous or impracticable; yet it is a matter of the utmost importance that a well-digested plan should, as soon as possible, be adopted for the proper establishment of the militia. The attention of the government ought particularly to be directed to the formation of a select corps of moderate extent, upon such principles as will really fit them for service in case of need. By thus circumscribing the plan, it will be possible to have an excellent body of well-trained militia, ready to take the field whenever the defense of the State shall require it. This will not only lessen the call for military establishments, but if circumstances should at any time oblige the government to form an army of any magnitude that army can never be formidable to the liberties of the people while there is a large body of citizens, little, if at all, inferior to them in discipline and the use of arms, who stand ready to defend their own rights and those of their fellow-citizens. This appears to me the only substitute that can be devised for a standing army, and the best possible security against it, if it should exist...

Hamilton makes it clear that the Framers expected the people-militia to be competent in the use of arms in case they were called to defend the security of their free states.

A drug addict would not be capable of acting in this capacity, would be likely to neglect his duties of maintaining his arms, and therefore would be a danger to others should he be called into action.

If the purpose of the second amendment was to form a citizen militia that was "little, if at all, inferior to [standing armies] in discipline and the use of arms," a drug addict would fail that criterion and ought to be excluded from this expectation as long as he is still addicted to drugs.

-PJ

washpost.com
James Kranish
Dec 2023

Joe’s brother James’ influence-peddling deal caught on FBI tape
James and wife Sara worked deals together

Scruggs turned to Biden’s younger brother James, an old acquaintance who ran a D.C. consulting firm with his wife, Sara. Scruggs paid the firm $100,000 in 1998 for advice on passing the bill, Scruggs said in an interview at his office here — the first time he has disclosed the amount.

“I probably wouldn’t have hired him if he wasn’t the senator’s brother,” Scruggs said.
Biden eventually backed the bill, which ultimately failed to pass Congress.

“Jim was never untoward about his influence,” Scruggs said. “He didn’t brag about it or talk about it. He didn’t have to. He was the man’s brother.”

Scruggs’s deal with James Biden highlights how President Biden’s brother has for decades benefited financially from his proximity to his powerful sibling, a relationship that is newly relevant today as congressional Republicans investigate whether President Biden assisted his family members’ business deals. During Joe Biden’s 36 years in the Senate, eight years as vice president and now three years as president, James Biden’s private business work — as a consultant for hire and behind-the-scenes political fixer — has often intersected with his brother’s public responsibilities.

For months, that probe has focused on the president’s son Hunter Biden, but the House Oversight Committee recently issued subpoenas for James and Sara Biden to testify, drawing attention to James Biden’s unique role in his brother’s life and career. James and Sara Biden’s company Lion Hall, to which Scruggs paid $100,000, also is cited in one of the subpoenas as central to the probe.

Scruggs said he did not know whether James Biden had talked to his brother about his vote, “but I hope he did.” Paul J. Fishman, a lawyer for James and Sara Biden, said in an email that neither had talked to Joe Biden about the tobacco settlement bill. “Jim Biden’s consulting work has never involved speaking with or providing access to his brother for this or any other client,” Fishman said.

The White House did not respond to a list of questions from The Washington Post about President Biden’s action on the tobacco legislation and, more broadly, on his relationship with his brother and whether he has ever used his public position to help him financially.

The deal with Lion Hall also illuminates the Bidens’ decades-long relationship with Scruggs, once one of the country’s most powerful trial lawyers, who made his fortune taking on corporate interests and making friends in politics. Scruggs took James Biden on a boat trip while discussing a potential partnership on asbestos lawsuits; flew Joe Biden on his private plane to a fundraiser; and met with Biden family members at a University of Mississippi football game, Scruggs and his associates said in interviews.

But James and Sara Biden’s ties to Scruggs also later brought them to the periphery of a sweeping federal investigation, one that eventually led to the trial lawyer’s epic downfall in 2008 over a bribery scheme.

pic-James and Sara Biden arrive at the Obama White House for state dinner for South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Oct. 13, 2011.

As FBI agents circled in on Scruggs and his associates over a plan to deliver $40,000 in bribes to a local judge, they also secretly recorded conversations with James Biden — who, at the same time, was trying to create a consulting firm with the Scruggs partners. Neither James Biden nor his brother was charged or accused of wrongdoing in the case, which led to prison for Scruggs and several of his associates, including James Biden’s would-be partners.

Fishman, asked about this case, responded by email that “more than fifteen years ago, Jim and Sara Biden had serious discussions” with Scruggs’s associates in Mississippi “about starting a firm that would provide legal and consulting services. That venture never got off the ground. Jim and Sara were not aware of or involved in any unethical or illegal behavior” by the associates.

Much of the material related to James Biden in the Mississippi case is not available in court files, but the recordings, transcripts and other material were collected by Curtis Wilkie, who wrote a 2010 book about Scruggs, “The Fall of the House of Zeus,” which reported a number of details about the Biden connections. Wilkie granted permission for The Post to review his archives at the University of Mississippi, including FBI recordings of James Biden. In addition, The Post reviewed thousands of pages of court records and other material and interviewed key participants.

What emerges is a tale of money, politics and influence, stretching from Mississippi to the corridors of power in Washington, one that has echoes of a legal thriller by John Grisham — who, like the novelist William Faulkner, once lived in Oxford. It is, at its heart, a tale of the bond between the Biden brothers — one that is now being tested anew amid a flurry of subpoenas issued by Republican lawmakers.

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