DOJ Prosecutors Insist on Authenticity of Hunter Biden Laptop, Will Use Data as Evidence at Gun Trial
Hunter Biden attends a House Oversight Committee meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., January 10, 2024.
Almost four years after the Hunter Biden laptop story was censored by social-media platforms and dismissed by ex-intelligence officials, the Justice Department is planning on using “self-authenticating” data from the laptop at Biden’s upcoming federal gun trial.
Special counsel David Weiss’s team of prosecutors is asking a judge to allow them to use evidence from the laptop during the gun trial. They’ve also asked the judge to prevent Biden from casting doubt on the authenticity of the laptop, which federal investigators verified in late 2019, according to the Justice Department and IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley.
“The defendant has not offered any conspiracy theory, much less any evidence, regarding how or why Apple, Inc. produced manipulated data for his iPhone and iPad. Second, the data from the laptop that the government is utilizing is not only self-authenticating, but it will be introduced with corroborating evidence at trial,” senior assistant special counsel Derek Hines asserted in a court filing on Wednesday.
Apple provided the government files from Biden’s two iCloud servers, one to back up his iPad and the other to back up his iPhone. Federal prosecutors are prepared to introduce messages from those devices sent between April 2018 and January 2019, Hines said. An FBI technician extracted files from Biden’s laptop after an examination in 2019 and those are the files from Biden’s laptop the government expects to introduce.
Witness testimony, Biden’s memoir, and other third party evidence will corroborate the authenticity of Biden’s laptop, Hines said. Hunter Biden’s attorneys have claimed the laptop data was manipulated by Delaware computer repairman John Mac Isaac without offering any technical evidence to substantiate that claim.
“Any argument that suggests his laptop is not authentic would be inappropriate because there is no foundation for such questioning, and it risks creating juror confusion about the evidence actually at issue in this case,” Hines added.
“The government requests that the Court grant the motion because the records are self-authenticating. The government further requests that the Court prohibit the defendant from suggesting that the electronic evidence is fabricated, manipulated, altered, or inauthentic because he has not offered any evidence supporting such a claim.”
In October 2020, when the New York Post first reported on emails in Hunter Biden’s laptop archive related to his foreign business dealings, social-media platforms censored the story and 51 former intelligence officials claimed the story bore the hallmarks of Russian disinformation, without offering evidence. Then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden cited the ex-intelligence officials at a subsequent presidential debate to dismiss then-president Donald Trump’s criticism of his son.
Former senior CIA official Michael Morell, one of the letter’s signatories, testified last year and described how Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential campaign orchestrated the discredited letter.
Hunter Biden’s lucrative foreign business dealings during and after Joe Biden’s vice presidency are the main focus of the House GOP’s impeachment inquiry into the president. Explosive whistleblower documents released on Wednesday appear to suggest Hunter Biden made false statements during his testimony for the impeachment inquiry earlier this year.
The Justice Department is prosecuting Hunter Biden in Delaware on three federal gun charges stemming from a firearm purchase he made in October 2018 when he was addicted to drugs. Biden is being accused of lying about his drug addiction on gun forms and possessing a firearm for eleven days while suffering from a crack cocaine addiction. All three charges against Biden are felonies and he faces a maximum of 25 years in prison.
The gun trial is set to begin on June 3 and Biden’s criminal trial on separate federal tax charges is scheduled to start in September.
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