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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   33061 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 19, 2023

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A relevant fact that I don't think has been established is what the typical outcome is for a drug user who says "no" to question six on form 4437 (which asks if the purchaser is "an unlawful user of or addicted to marijuana or any depressant or stimulant drug") but isn't charged with other crimes. The fighting has mostly been Democrats suggesting that since felons who "try & lie" on form 4437 aren't prosecuted it's unusual for Hunter to be prosecuted and Republicans rebutting them and saying that Hunter is different since he actually got the gun where "try & lie" felons are denied. This still leaves the question unanswered of what is the typical outcome is for a drug user who lies and successfully obtains a gun but isn't charged with other drug-related or violent crimes. Can anyone provide examples of someone who did a similar crime and compare what penalties they faced?

The Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee put forth an interesting example of a tax case that closely fits what Hunter did. Steven E. Smiff was a Florida Lawyer who didn't file taxes from 1997-2011 for the ~8 million in profits from his law firm. He paid the back taxes and got thirteen months in prison. Hunter didn't pay taxes for two years on roughly three million, paid the money back, and got two years probation in conjunction with the gun crime. Hunter's offense seems less severe since it was 1/7th of the years and 1/3 of the money, but maybe he should have done four or five months for failing to pay. It does look like Hunter got off a bit light for the tax stuff, but if that's the closest comparison a Republican congressional research team can find then the five years jail per count that The National Review suggests was never on the table.

Except the whistleblower is alleging that it wasn’t just failure to pay taxes but willfully evasion. The DOJ then agreed to a plea wherein Hunter would plea him i failure to pay. So it appears the cases are not identical; what Hunter did was worse.

You're going to have to elaborate on this, because he was charged with willful nonpayment.

And note that the indictment and plea deal were announced simultaneously, which implies he agreed to plead to a lesser crime in order to avoid greater charges. I am not sure there is a substantive difference between that and charging the greater crime and subsequently accepting a plea to the lesser charge.

You do realize this shouldn’t really be mitigating? Hunter, due to his political connections, got a gift. Absent that gift it appears Hunter cannot repay. Why should Hunter’s political connections change whether he did something wrong and should be punished?

This is putting aside that Hunter may have willfully evaded declaring a bunch of income (ie not just failure to pay but attempted to conceal)

Section 7203

Can anyone provide examples of someone who did a similar crime and compare what penalties they faced?

Most publicized cases tend to involve a lot more firearms and a lot more drugs, but cases do happen and can result in lengthy sentences. Some of those have further moron taxes than present for even Hunter Biden, but Hunter's not exactly off the moron tax list himself.

If anyone wants the statistics, this report says (on pg 24) that of the 7373 §2K2.1 convictions in the 2021 year, 5.3% (or 347) were for prohibited persons where the prohibition was due to unlawful drug use. Unfortunately, looking the other direction -- how many people who are prohibited persons related to drug usage get caught and sentenced -- is an unknown and probably unknowable thing.

So going through those examples

  1. Paul Letts was alleged to have let people cook meth in RV's on his property in exchange for some of the meth. The police raided his property and found 55 guns, equipment for manufacturing meth, possession amounts of meth and Letts later tested positive for Meth. He didn't plead guilty and lost his trial in two days, he had a criminal history and got 57 months in jail.

  2. Suzanne Wilcox pled guilty after being found at a traffic stop to have drug paraphernalia and a newly purchased handgun. She got time served (five months) and two years probation

  3. Isca Johnson was found to have marijuana and a gun in his home, he got 21 months jail. This one is weird because it says he was part of a joint state federal operation called "Crime Drivers" which targeted people with warrants out for violent crime, but it doesn't say anything about his criminal history.

  4. Darion Hayne had a [Edit:] 5.7 x 28mm handgun and 5.4g of Marijuana, he got five years probation with six months home confinement.

  5. Your fifth link goes to the Isca Johnson one again so I'll add one Sauma Brata Deb got 12 months for illegally posessing two guns.

So just looking at these cases the most lenient sentences available to a normal drug user who illegally possesses a single gun are six month prison or home confinement and two to five years parole. In that context it looks like Hunter did better then a normal person would, but only by a small amount because the penalties for this crime are normally quite small.

If lying on the Form 4473 were the only crime he committed, sure. But it's not even the only gun he unlawfully possessed: it was a .38 revolver, while some of the photos from the Laptop That Wasn't show (in addition to way too much of Hunter for me to want to link directly or see again) Hunter holding a semi-automatic. And then there's the crack possession, the tax fraud, the likely FARA violations, the regular hiring of prostitutes/escorts (state-law only).

Hence my comments about being on the moron tax list himself.

This one is weird because it says he was part of a joint state federal operation called "Crime Drivers" which targeted people with warrants out for violent crime, but it doesn't say anything about his criminal history.

Jodeci Young from the same charging burst was in a similar boat; it's not clear if they were never convicted or if it was just never reported. Lot of possible explanations, unfortunately, both for why they were bundled in and for why they may have had different outcomes.

It should be noted that Hunter’s gun ended up in a school trash can. That makes this…a bit worse

It was not a school trash can, but a trash can within 1,000 feet of a school zone. That is a felony under the GFCZA if Hunter Biden does not have a Delaware carry permit.

Do we have any evidence on that in either direction?

Isn't the claim there that Hallie Biden threw it in the trash (of a supermarket near a school) because she was worried he would kill himself? We have a text exchange from the laptop that sort of supports that. What would they charge Hunter with in that instance?

The larger point was the general carelessness of handling the gun. This wasn’t the case of a guy who smoked weed and had a gun locked up in his closet in a gun safe.

I couldn't find mug shots for all of those with any certainty, but all the faces I could find were Black. Maybe what we're seeing here is... Garden variety racism and wealth? Wouldn't that be funny if we worked our way back around.

Or the others were involved in more serious crimes and this was the easiest way to get them off the streets and/or they had much worse prior records.

Darion Hayne had a 28mm handgun and 5.4g of Marijuana, he got five years probation with six months home confinement.

...bolded for WTF, mate. Is Darion Hayne a combat cyborg? Is this a typo for 2 9mm handguns?

[EDIT] ...oooooh, he had a 5.7x28mm handgun. that makes more sense.

MAIN POINT OF SELLING BELGIAN FIVE SEVEN PISTOL IS EXTREME PRICE OF WEAPON AND CARTRIDGE.

That would be a tokarev, I think, which is dimly hilarious because it’s unlikely he bought that off the shelf at a gun shop. I mean maybe a collector pawned their tokarev?

Ah, got the numbers reversed.

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