Hunter Biden Verdict, Supreme Court Corruption

Hunter Biden’s Trial:

After a three-hour deliberation, a jury in Delaware unanimously determined that Hunter Biden is guilty on two counts of making false statements about his drug use when he bought the weapon and one count of illegal possession of a firearm by a drug user or addict.   He plans to appeal.

At this time, no date has been set for sentencing with a maximum of 25 years in prison and $750,000 in charges. Judge Maryellen Noreika, appointed by former Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), said she plans to hold a sentencing hearing in approximately four months. Other than prison, options include probation, home detention, and a curfew. Hunter has no criminal history, and the conviction charges rarely go to trial. His father, President Joe Biden, has said he will not pardon Hunter unlike DDT’s pattern using his pardon power almost exclusively for his political allies and friends.  

DDT wanted Hunter to be prosecuted in 2018, but his Delaware AG, the same one who prosecuted him this time, didn’t follow through with the case. Now DDT’s aides are criticizing the trial as an effort to protect Joe Biden from prosecution for all his crimes that they can’t find. Stephen Miller complained that the DOJ failed to charge Hunter Biden as an unregistered foreign agent and over evidence-free instances of foreign corruption “because all the evidence would lead back to JOE.”

Hunter spiraled down into drug use for four years after his older brother, Beau Biden, died from brain cancer in 2015. Far-right House Republicans Thomas Massie (KY) and Matt Gaetz (FL) see no reason why Hunter should go to prison for the conviction.  Trey Gowdy, former GOP representative from South Carolina and currently a Fox network host, said:

“I did gun prosecutions for six years … I bet you there weren’t 10 cases prosecuted nationwide of addicts or unlawful drug users who possessed firearms or lied on applications … why are you pursuing this one?”

Supreme Court Corruption:

The conclusion of Hunter Biden’s trial has allowed the serious problems of the Supreme Court to become front and center. After the flag stories, including Samuel Alito’s lying about the situation, the narrative seemed to be over, but it instead got much worse. His latest crisis came after journalist Lauren Windsor attended the Supreme Court Historical Society’s annual dinner, where he and Chief Justice Roberts were speaking, and masqueraded as a conservative. A member of the organization, Windsor attended under her own name and taped the public conversation.

Alito easily reported the “difficulty of living ‘peacefully’ with ideological opponents in the face of ‘fundamental’ differences that ‘can’t be compromised.’” He agreed with what Windsor called the “necessary fight to ‘return our country to a place of godliness.’” With these statements made in public, the question is what he’s saying during debates with his colleagues to make decisions. Even worse, how could he claim to be an impartial justice?

Windsor has a record of eliciting confessions from political figures, one of them persuading Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) to tell her that some senators considered refusals to certify Biden’s win ahead of the vote on January 6, 2021. While the GOP candidate for Virginia governor, Glenn Youngkin told her he couldn’t push his anti-abortion views because he would lose independent voters.

In another tape at the event, Roberts denied any polarization after Alito’s statements, saying that it’s no worse than during the Vietnam War. He said:

“The idea that the court is in the middle of a lot of tumultuous stuff going on is nothing new.”

At the event, Windsor also taped Alito’s wife, Martha-Ann Alito, in an impassioned anti-LGBTQ rant about being forced to see the Pride flag during June. In her comments, she indicated that her husband might be resigning if Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) is elected. She said about her husband that “when you’re free of this nonsense,” she’ll put up a flag and “send them a message every day, maybe every week, I’ll be changing the flags.” Rolling Stone’s conclusion about Alito’s remarks:

“The justice’s unguarded comments highlight the degree to which Alito makes little effort to present himself as a neutral umpire calling judicial balls and strikes, but rather as a partisan member of a hard-right judicial faction that’s empowered to make life-altering decisions for every American.”

Joyce Vance, former AG for Alabama, described the legal standard for recusal under federal law:

“Any justice, judge, or magistrate judge of the United States shall disqualify himself in any proceeding in which his impartiality might reasonably be questioned.”

Vance added a statistic about Alito’s rulings on “standing,” whether a plaintiff can bring claims to court, calling him the Court’s “most reliable partisan”:

“An empirical analysis of the Court’s ‘standing’ decisions … found that Alito rules in favor of conservative litigants 100% of the time & against liberal litigants in every single case.”   

Windsor plans a documentary, Gonzo for Democracy, chronicling the growth of Trumpism, election denial, and religious extremism. She said she wants to give the public a “window into a body that is increasingly powerful and increasingly willing to overturn precedent.” Windsor also secretly recorded Alito in 2023.

Top Senate Judiciary Committee member Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) is also calling on Alito for information about an interview he gave the Wall Street Journal on Supreme Court ethics after Alito refused to recuse himself from the January 6, 2021 insurrection and the 2020 election.

Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), a top Senate Judiciary Committee member, is calling on Justice Samuel Alito to provide information about an interview he gave the Wall Street Journal on Supreme Court ethics, a request that comes after Alito declined to recuse himself from cases involving Jan. 6, 2021, and the 2020 election. The senator said that Alito’s statement that there is “no provision in the Constitution” that gives Congress the authority to regulate the court was “improper.” The interview was published last July, over a month after ProPublica reported that Alito vacationed with a top GOP donor to Alaska for a fishing trip. From Whitehouse’s letter to Alito:

“The interview raised several problems. It thus appears that you offered an improper opinion regarding a question that might come before the Court; did so in the context of a known ongoing legal dispute involving that precise question; did so at the behest of an interviewer who as a lawyer represented a client in that ongoing dispute; and did so to the benefit of his client, your personal friend, and to the benefit of yourself, as a recipient of undisclosed gifts that are the subject of our investigation.”

“I note that the Supreme Court is the only place in all of government where issues of this nature have no place or means of investigation or resolution. So far, my questions regarding these events seem to have disappeared into a black hole of indifference.”

Alito wrote Whitehouse and committee chair Dick Durbin (D-IL) that he will not recuse himself from the January 6 cases, including DDT’s request for complete immunity, despite recent events such as flying the insurrection flags at his residence and his vacation home. Roberts also refuses to meet with the two senators to discuss the matter.

In comparison, Justice Clarence Thomas lacks the rigid conservative principles that Alito displays; he just follows the money for his decisions. According to a report from Fix the Court (FTC), justices accepted 344 gifts valued at $2,993,036 in the past two decades from January 2004 to December 2023. Another 101 likely gifts to Thomas added $1,787,684 for a total of 445 gifts valued at $4,780,720. Including gifts to the current nine justices plus eight who left the court since 2004 the total to 672 gifts valued at $6,592,657. Thomas has accepted $5,879,796 worth of gifts. The report indicates that amounts are an undercount because visits and free tickets were based on the low end.

Thomas accepted at least 38 vacations, 26 private jet flights, eight flights by helicopter, a dozen VIP passes to sporting events, two stays at luxury resorts in Florida and Jamaica, and a standing invitation to play at a high-end private golf club in Florida from several billionaire benefactors since 1991. Harlan Crow paid for Thomas’ luxury vacations, his mother’s house, and a nephew’s tuition payments, and the justice has also received special treatment from three other billionaires: David Sokol, H. Wayne Huizenga, and Paul “Tony” Novelly. All four billionaires have been major Republican donors.

Fox is finally outraged by a donation to a Supreme Court justice that it calls “eye-popping.” Ketanji Brown Jackson accepted four concert tickets, valued at $3,700, from pop star Beyoncé, and then disclosed the gift as soon as she was required to do so. She also received an $900,000 advance for her upcoming memoir Lovely One out in September and two gifts of artwork in her chambers worth $12,500. Other “eye-popping filings” [were over] $6,500 in clothes from a photo shoot and a $1,200 flower display from Oprah Winfrey. Fox did add that Thomas amended his 2019 filing to add two trips paid by Harlan Crow initially “inadvertently omitted”—but no value.