Hunter Biden became the first child of a sitting president to be convicted of a crime Tuesday after a federal jury found him guilty of lying about his drug use in order to buy a gun.
The panel of six men and six women deliberated for three hours across two days before convicting the 54-year-old of making a false statement in the purchase of a firearm, making a false statement related to information required to be kept by a federally licensed firearms dealer, and possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of or addict to a controlled substance.
Prosecutors from special counsel David Weiss’ office had argued President Biden’s son knowingly fibbed on a gun application form that he did not use controlled substances before walking out of a Wilmington shop with a Colt Cobra .38-caliber revolver on Oct. 12, 2018.
In fact, Hunter Biden was hooked on crack cocaine at the time, a fact he acknowledged in his own 2021 memoir — which prosecutors used as evidence against him.
The first son stared at the jury and made no visible reaction as the foreperson read the verdict. Hunter’s wife Melissa sat in the gallery behind him, next to her husband’s “sugar brother,” attorney Kevin Morris.
The first son faces up to 25 years behind bars — though a lighter sentence is much more likely since he has no prior convictions.
This is incredible. I never thought it was possible. If you’re a Biden and you can’t beat the rap in Delaware? Man . . .
I’m not a big fan of girls in pajamas, generally speaking, but this lass is one of the exceptions. I’m sure our compadres at Flappr would have some great turns of phrase to describe this pneumatic babe, but I’m just going to say “Wow”. Thanks to Rule5Texan on X. Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
Another good week for my Senators, who took two of three from the A’s and then another two of three from the Dodgers on a roadtrip through California. I credit the offense’s awakening to right-fielder John Lowenstein, whose batting average is a mere .220, but who draws a lot of walks, belted three homers against the Dodgers, and has a decent arm. We face Boston in a two-game series Tuesday, which I think I’m going to reschedule since I expect to be on the road back from Las Vegas that day. We end the week at 34-40, just 3.5 games behind the Twins and four games ahead of the hapless A’s. #NoSurrender Ceterum autem censeo Silicon Valley et Hamas delendam sunt.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) confirmed Sunday that all three of the male hostages rescued on Saturday were held by Abdallah Aljamal, a “journalist” who contributed to the Palestine Chronicle and Al Jazeera.
As Breitbart News reported Saturday, four hostages — Noa Argamani, 25; Almog Meir Jan, 21; Andrey Kozlov, 27; and Shlomi Ziv, 40 — were rescued in a joint operation by the IDF, ISA, and the Israeli police. One Israeli police officer, Arnon Zamora, was killed in the operation.
Aljamal and his wife and father were reportedly killed in the Israeli raid after soldiers entered his home.
As Breitbart News reported, he was revealed to have had another job, as the spokesperson for the Hamas-run Palestinian Department of Labor in Gaza.
But speculation also mounted that he had held one or more hostages, given that some Israeli sources said soldiers had only entered the two apartments where hostages were held.
The IDF announced:
Following the completion of IDF and ISA [Israel Security Agency] examinations of reports on the subject, it can be confirmed that Abdallah Aljamal was an operative in the Hamas terrorist organization, who held the hostages Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv captive in his family home in Nuseirat.
The hostages were held captive by Abdallah Aljamal and members of his family in their home. This is further evidence of the deliberate use of civilian homes and buildings by the Hamas terrorist organization to hold Israeli hostages captive in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli security forces will continue to make every effort to bring the hostages home.
Journalist, terrorist — to-may-to, to-mah-to. Six of one, half a dozen of the other. When “news” organizations are employing members of terrorist organizations, when the journalist’s family home is being used to stash hostages, when it seems everybody in Gaza is part of Hamas, why not just kill every single one of those Palestinian vermin?
Well, thoughts like that could start to cross the minds of a lot of otherwise peaceful and rational people, if they were as well-informed of the situation as the average Israeli citizen. There’s a reason why Netanyahu can shrug off all foreign criticism, because the Israeli people are sick and tired of all this “peace” noise, when they are facing an existential menace.
The fuck-around-and-find-out process must continue until every last one of those Palestinian sons of bitches have found out.
Four Israeli hostages were rescued alive from Hamas captivity Saturday in a daring daylight operation in the central Gaza Strip, the military announced.
Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40, had been abducted from the Supernova music festival near the community of Re’im on the morning of October 7, when some 3,000 Hamas-led terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages in a murderous rampage in southern Israel.
Officers of police’s elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit, along with Shin Bet agents, simultaneously raided two Hamas-controlled multi-story buildings in the heart of central Gaza’s Nuseirat, a joint statement said. Argamani was rescued at one site, while Meir Jan, Kozlov, and Ziv were at the second location.
Hundreds more soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces participated in the operation, according to the military.
Israel Defense Forces Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari said the hostages were rescued by special forces while “under fire.”
Yamam Chief Inspector Arnon Zmora, who commanded the rescue team at the building where three hostages were being held, was critically wounded by Hamas fire. He was brought to an Israeli hospital, but died shortly after. The Hamas guards were killed in the exchange.
Heroic fighter dies rescuing hostages, terrorists killed — it’s the stuff of a blockbuster action film, and you would think everybody would be happy. But oh, not our “friends” in the media:
What’s important to the media is that, no matter what the facts may be, only members of Officially Approved Victim Groups are deserving of sympathy. Arabs and Muslims are victims of racism, according to the media calculus and so, even when they murder or kidnap innocent civilians, the real victims are the Palestinians. Thus, the headlines of stories about hostages being rescued from Hamas terrorists must include whatever propaganda claim the terrorists themselves make about it.
Implied by these headlines is that Palestinians killed during this incident (whatever Hamas says the number is, the media will dutifully report as if it were a proven fact) were all innocent civilians. The fact that Hamas is at war with Israel, that Hamas started this war by deliberately targeting civilians, and that in a guerrilla-type war such as this, many “civilians” are actively involved in the fighting — never mind any of that. Also, never mind that Hamas is a brutal gang of killers who would not hesitate to tell any lie that advances their “cause” (i.e., killing every Jew on the planet).
Never mind any of that, if you work in the media, where everybody seems to assume their job is to promote whatever “social justice” narrative is in vogue at the moment. If the current thing requires them to gin up sympathy for terrorist murderers, that’s what they’ll do. And that’s how homicidal Jew-haters became the media’s new heroes.
At the time she perpetrated the Covenant School massacre, Hale was under treatment by both a psychiatrist and a therapist. The distinction is important — a psychiatrist is an M.D., who can write prescriptions, whereas a therapist is basically a counselor, someone with a degree in psychology, to whom the patient talks about their problems. So medication and conversation are, in such a case, handled by two separate “mental health professionals” who, we suppose, consult with each other.
The fact that Audrey/“Aiden” Hale was not healed by this treatment — to the contrary, she became a worst-case scenario of therapeutic effectiveness — is not unusual. Most people who are subjected to treatment by “mental health professionals” never really become healthy. With the assistance of anti-depressants or other medications, they may be able to get through life OK, but how can you say turning someone into a drug addict is “success”? Excuse me for speaking so bluntly, but if the goal is “mental health” and you require Prozac (Zoloft, Paxil, etc.) just to make it through the day? No, you haven’t achieved “mental health.”
Two packs of Marlboro a day — is that an effective mental health treatment? Well, I haven’t committed mass murder, so in terms of therapeutic effectiveness, maybe my track record isn’t too bad. Certainly, I would argue that my record is better than the “mental health professionals at Vanderbilt University Medical Center,” but I digress . . .
The Tennessee Star has obtained dozens of pages of Audrey Hale’s journals, which have been called (somewhat inaccurately) a “manifesto,” and have been cranking out a series of headlines like these:
This steady drip, drip, drip of headlines ultimately makes the point, as Ed Driscoll says at Instapundit, “No wonder the FBI and Nashville authorities have been suppressing her manifesto” — it’s an absolute gold mine of insight into the craziness that inspired this homicidal lunatic, and the feds don’t want you to know about it. That’s confirmed by perhaps the most shocking story released this week:
FBI Memo on ‘Protection of Legacy Tokens’ Sent to Nashville Police in May 2023 Opposed Release of Covenant Killer Documents, Cited Destruction Precedent
The Tennessee Star has obtained the FBI memo sent to the Metro Nashville Police Department (MNPD) on May 11, 2023 from a source familiar with the Covenant killer investigation.
The letterhead and heading used for the memo indicate it originated at the FBI’s Critical Incident Response Group in Quantico, Virginia. The opening paragraphs reveal it was sent by the FBI’s Behavioral Threat Assessment Center (BTAC), the home of the FBI’s Behavorial Analysis Unit (BAU-1). The memo was not signed.
The memo does not specifically mention Audrey Elizabeth Hale, who fatally shot three 9-year-old students and three faculty members in the devastating March 27, 2023 attack at the Covenant School in Nashville.
It was, however, sent two days after Star News Digital Media, Inc., which owns The Tennessee Star, and the company’s CEO, Michael Patrick Leahy, filed a lawsuit against the FBI in federal court to compel the release of Hale’s written documents, including those sometimes called a manifesto, and one day after Star News Digital Media, Inc. and Leahy filed a lawsuit against Metro Nashville Davidson County Government in state court for the same purpose.
The FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit has been involved in the MNPD’s investigation into the Covenant killings since the very first day, sources familiar with the investigation have told The Star. MNPD Public Affairs Director Don Aaron confirmed the FBI’s involvement in the investigation to The Star when asked about the FBI memo on Tuesday, though he did not specify the date at which that involvement began.
“As has been publicly acknowledged, the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit has assisted in this Homicide investigation,” Aaron told The Star.
“Any material related to that assistance that is part of the open case file is protected. As I referenced earlier today, our Homicide team is working to bring this matter to a conclusion,” Aaron added.
Addressed to Metro Police Chief John Drake, the memo “strongly discourages” MNPD from releasing “legacy tokens” left by a mass murderer.
The FBI memo explains those who commit mass shootings “often leave behind items to claim credit for the attack and / or articulate the motivation behind it.” The agency “refers to these items as legacy tokens.”
The term “legacy token” appears to be a creation of the FBI. A June 2018 FBI document studying pre-attack behaviors of active shooters defines “legacy tokens” as “a communication prepared by the offender to claim credit for the attack and articulate the motives underlying the shooting.” . . .
You can read the rest of that, but the upshot is, the FBI’s Behavioral Threat Assessment Center ordered a cover-up, deliberately seeking to suppress important information about this mass murderer.
That ought to make a lot of people angry. The basic argument for transparency about police proceedings is this — what the police do, they do on behalf of the public, under the authority of the government, at taxpayer expense. Because we are paying for the police, we have a right to know what they’re doing. There are, of course, many situations where maintaining the integrity of an investigation requires police to keep some information out of the public eye, so as not to hinder the apprehension and prosecution of criminals. We get that. But generally speaking, we want the names and mug shots of suspects arrested for crimes, and expect that such official court documents as arrest affidavits, applications for search warrants, etc., will be released to the public.
In the case of Audrey Hale, of course, the suspect is dead, and there is no argument to be made for protecting the integrity of the investigation of her crime, from the standpoint that it might prevent her from being convicted in court (which is the usual justification for investigative secrecy). Dead criminals don’t file appeals. However, given the fact that Hale was being treated by “mental health professionals,” there is some reason to think that the people treating Hale failed in their duty to report her as presenting a danger to public safety. It is being alleged that Hale told her therapists about her fantasies of shooting up a school, and the therapists neglected their legal obligation to report this credible threat. So there are some people who may be in legal jeopardy and, if Tennessee authorities are actively investigating that angle with an eye toward criminal prosecution, there arguably might be justification for keeping a lid on this stuff. BUT IT’S BEEN MORE THAN A YEAR ALREADY!
This slow-motion foot-dragging approach by Nashville police ought to be the subject of action by state authorities in Tennessee — the governor, the legislature, the state attorney general. Something has gone badly wrong in how authorities in Nashville are handling this case, and I think the FBI’s involvement is part of the problem. Merrick Garland and the powers that be at the Department of Justice have a political agenda, and I don’t think it’s a far-fetched “conspiracy theory” to suggest that the DOJ wants to keep the Covenant School massacre case from getting the kind of public attention it deserves. Here you have a transgender-identified lunatic murdering innocent people, including three children, at a Christian school, and hey, maybe that doesn’t look so good for the Democratic Party’s LGBTQIA+ agenda, ya think?
Of course, we knew the basic facts early. They hadn’t even started mopping up the blood at Covenant School when we learned that Audrey Hale was a “high-functioning” autistic who “relatively recently announced she was transgender.” And these two factors — autism and a transgender obsession — are related in ways that are more than coincidental. The American College of Pediatricians released a statement urging medical organizations to stop pushing transgender treatment “for children and adolescents who experience distress over their biological sex”:
Instead, these organizations should recommend comprehensive evaluations and therapies aimed at identifying and addressing underlying psychological co-morbidities and neurodiversity that often predispose to and accompany gender dysphoria.
The American College of Pediatricians just put out a ??? statement calling out all the major medical associations by name for pushing the gender transition craze on kids.
They ask for these groups to “IMMEDIATELY stop the promotion of social affirmation, puberty blockers,… pic.twitter.com/Rba8HDLkoM
Well-informed observers have known about this for years: A very high percentage of young people who declare a transgender identity also have a documented history of depression, anxiety, personality disorders, autism or some other psychiatric disturbance. You can’t cure psychosis with mastectomies and hormones. As I keep reminding readers — and “mental health professionals” — Crazy People Are Dangerous.
