Northeast
Judge bars prosecutors from using some salacious evidence in Hunter Biden's gun trial
The judge presiding over Hunter Biden’s federal gun case in Delaware on Friday ruled that prosecutors on Special Counsel David Weiss’ team cannot use some salacious evidence in the first son’s criminal trial next month, including references to his U.S. Navy discharge and the child support case for his out-of-wedlock daughter in Arkansas.
The court met for its final hearing before jury selection begins on June 3. Fox News has previously reported that prosecutors planned to use portions of his book and laptop, including photos, to convince a jury that the first son is guilty of making false statements on a federal form when he purchased a revolver in 2018, while actively using narcotics. Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
Judge Maryellen Noreika on Friday said that Weiss must show Hunter Biden was addicted to drugs — but not necessarily using drugs the day he purchased the gun.
HUNTER BIDEN IS IN COURT IN DELAWARE. HERE’S WHAT HE DOESN’T WANT THE JURY TO HEAR
Noreika said the government may use part of Hunter Biden’s book where he discusses his addiction to drugs.
The prosecution does not plan to bring out the entire infamous laptop containing details of Hunter Biden’s life, but will introduce certain portions. Noreika ruled that Hunter Biden’s team will be able to question aspects of the laptop in front of the jury. The laptop, which leaked in 2020 just before the presidential election, was decried as Russian disinformation by 51 former intelligence officials.
Hunter Biden, son of President Joe Biden, speaks to members of the media outside the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 13, 2023. (Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In court documents filed Friday morning, Hunter Biden’s defense attorneys asked the court to block certain salacious details of his life from being shown to the jury to avoid “significant risk of unfair prejudice.”
In what is called a “motion in limine,” Hunter Biden asked the court “to exclude reference to the child support proceedings in Arkansas and reference to his discharge from the Navy.” This is in reference to the child he fathered out-of-wedlock with ex-stripper Lunden Roberts, whose daughter is President Biden’s grandchild.
Acknowledging that some of the evidence prosecutors wish to bring forward may be relevant to the case, including purported drug purchases, ATM withdrawals and the purchase of the revolver, Hunter Biden’s lawyers said other details like references to money allegedly spent on “adult entertainment, online chat rooms, or escort services are not relevant to the charges.”
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“Characterizing or referencing unnecessary salacious details — such as how much things cost, whether they are upscale, or citing expenses concerning collateral alleged sexual conduct unrelated to the charges here — are the exact type of prejudicial, inflammatory evidence that has a tendency to make a conviction more likely because it provokes an emotional response in the jury,” the defense argued.
“Accordingly, Mr. Biden respectfully requests that this Court grant his Motion in limine to exclude any reference to an ‘extravagant’ or ‘lavish’ lifestyle during periods of his addiction,” his lawyers wrote.
Noreika agreed in part, and ruled that the special counsel cannot use the phrase “extravagant lifestyle,” but can include evidence Hunter Biden was spending a lot of money.
Noreika also ruled that the special counsel cannot discuss Hunter Biden’s discharge from the U.S. Navy. He was discharged from the Navy in 2014 after testing positive for cocaine.
Noreika also said Weiss cannot use Hunter Biden’s comments from the day he initially pleaded guilty as part of a collapsed plea deal.
A courtroom sketch depicts Hunter Biden in a federal courtroom in Wilmington, Delaware, on July 26, 2023. (William J. Hennessy, Jr.)
According to Weiss’s gun indictment, Hunter Biden bought a Colt Cobra revolver on Oct. 12, 2018, and “knowingly made a false and fictitious written statement, intended and likely to deceive that dealer with respect to a fact material to the lawfulness of the sale of the firearm… certifying he was not an unlawful user of, and addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, and any other controlled substance, when in fact, as he knew, that statement was false and fictitious.”
The indictment also charges Hunter Biden with possessing that firearm — which was “shipped and transported in interstate commerce” — for nearly a week despite being addicted to narcotics.
With all counts combined, the total maximum prison time for the charges could be up to 25 years. Each count carries a maximum fine of $250,000, and three years of supervised release.
Fox News first reported in 2021 that police had responded to an incident in 2018, when a gun owned by Hunter Biden was thrown into a trash can outside a market in Delaware.
HUNTER BIDEN PRETRIAL HEARING ON GUN CHARGES SET FOR FRIDAY IN DELAWARE
A source with knowledge of the Oct. 23, 2018, police report told Fox News that it indicated that Hallie Biden, who is the widow of President Biden’s late son, Beau, and who was in a relationship with Hunter Biden at the time, threw a gun owned by Hunter Biden in a dumpster behind a market near a school.
Hallie Biden may be required to testify during Hunter Biden’s trial.
Noreika also decided Friday that Hunter Biden’s defense attorneys cannot tell the jury that Delaware state police declined to charge the first son at the time of the gun incident. Federal prosecutors did not bring charges against him on the matter until five years later.
Noreika also ruled that the special counsel cannot mention Hunter Biden’s pending federal tax trial in California during the trial in Delaware, which is also part of Weiss’ investigation and scheduled for a September trial.
Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to those charges — specifically, three felonies and six misdemeanors concerning $1.4 million in owed taxes that have since been paid. Weiss alleged a “four-year scheme” when the president’s son did not pay his federal income taxes from January 2017 to October 2020 while also filing false tax reports.
On Wednesday, Judge Mark Scarsi heard arguments during a pre-trial hearing in California. That criminal trial was scheduled for June 20, but Hunter Biden’s attorneys requested to delay the trial.
Scarsi sided with Hunter Biden’s attorneys, and moved the tax trial to Sept. 5, when jury selection will begin.
Fox News Digital’s Chris Pandolfo and Fox News’ David Spunt contributed to this report.
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Vermont
Federal reclassification of marijuana could ‘turbocharge’ Vermont’s medical market – VTDigger
The Trump administration’s move to reclassify marijuana as a lower-risk drug could provide major tax benefits to medical marijuana businesses, but for now, it leaves Vermont regulators charting a future that’s clear as mud.
Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche signed an order Thursday that shifts medical marijuana out of the most federally restrictive class of drugs — Schedule I, which includes LSD and synthetic opioids — into the less restrictive Schedule III. Further reclassification may soon follow.
The move has created a nationwide buzz about how the drug’s reclassification could make it easier to buy and sell marijuana and open up medical research.
Rescheduling the drug gives licensed medical marijuana businesses major federal tax breaks and makes it clear to researchers they can use cannabis products in their work. “This rescheduling action allows for research on the safety and efficacy of this substance, ultimately providing patients with better care and doctors with more reliable information,” Blanche said in a statement.
Vermont legalized medical cannabis in 2004 and later legalized recreational use of the drug in 2018. Now 78 towns have at least one dispensary, and last year cannabis sales in Vermont generated more than $150 million in revenue, according to Seven Days.
The reclassification could provide significant tax benefits to medical retailers in Vermont and “turbocharge” the state’s medical cannabis industry, according to Gabe Gilman, general counsel for the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. But the medical and recreational cannabis industries in Vermont are tangled together, which makes it difficult for regulators and businesses to understand the industries’ future in the state.
“I think the board is excited to see needed rescheduling but also trying to serve businesses that encounter just an absolutely unprecedented amount of ambiguity,” Gilman said.
After the reclassification, medical cannabis retailers could deduct their business expenses from their federal taxes for the first time, Gilman said. The change could result in major financial savings for businesses.
Joseph Verga, who owns Green Leaf Central dispensary in Burlington, has a state endorsement to sell medical along with recreational cannabis products. Verga called the reclassification, and the tax change, “a huge win” for his business.
The dispensary in the heart of the Queen City is getting by but struggling to bring in profit amid Burlington’s competitive market, Verga said.
With a boost from the tax change, “I’d hire more people, I would stay open later,” Verga said.
Verga said that while he hopes he gets a windfall from tax changes, he remains skeptical about the laws and regulations Vermont will have to figure out before businesses actually see the benefits.
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Verga said.
Marijuana has been a Schedule I drug since 1970, sitting among drugs that are considered to have no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse. Schedule III drugs are recognized as having medical applications and face fewer regulatory restrictions.
Because marijuana is federally illegal, Vermont — like many states — created its own legal and regulatory framework to support an in-state cannabis market. But Thursday’s federal order currently offers no guidance to states on how to make changes to their individual programs and regulations, Gilman said, which leaves Vermont regulators unsure of how to move forward.
Before Vermont legalized recreational marijuana, people with a qualifying condition diagnosed by a health care provider could buy cannabis from a medical dispensary.
But when Vermont created a recreational cannabis market, the medical industry began to drop off, Gilman said.
In response to the decline in the medical market, the state started a program last fall that allowed recreational dispensaries to receive medical endorsements, Gilman said. Those endorsements allowed retailers to sell to people on the state’s medical cannabis registry.
Since endorsing dispensaries, the state has seen more people using the medical cannabis market, Gilman said. But the change also made the state’s medical and recreational markets more interconnected, he said, creating a conundrum for regulators trying to understand how the federal reclassification of cannabis affects Vermont.
It’s unclear how state regulators or the Internal Revenue Service will define what qualifies as a medical cannabis business eligible for tax benefits, Gilman said. But tax implications from the federal reclassification will have a major financial impact one way or another, which could boost the state’s medical cannabis industry.
“There’s just going to be this huge incentive for everybody to try to look medical,” he said.
LaGuardia Airport’s failure to put communication transponders on emergency vehicles played a role in a fatal runway collision between an Air Canada passenger jet and an airport fire truck, according to a preliminary report the National Transportation Safety Board issued on Thursday.
The air traffic controller who allowed the fire truck to cross the runway even as the jet was approaching for a landing on March 22 had been juggling air and ground traffic leading up to the collision, the report says. And it details how the firefighters driving that truck, the lead vehicle in a convoy responding to an issue with another plane, failed to immediately understand that instructions they heard over the control tower frequency radio to “stop, stop, stop” were meant for them.
But the report focuses in particular on the lack of transponders in the emergency vehicles, which investigators suggested could have allowed an automatic warning system to alert the controller that the plane and the vehicles were on a potential crash course.
Without the transponders, the “system could not uniquely identify each of the seven responding vehicles or reliably determine their positions, or tracks,” investigators wrote in the report. “As a result, the system was unable to correlate the track of the airplane with the track of Truck 1” — the truck that was struck by the plane. Thus, the report added, the system “did not predict a potential conflict with the landing airplane.”
The Federal Aviation Administration recommended last year that airports outfit their emergency vehicles with such technology to avoid close calls. On Thursday, before the report was released, Kathryn Garcia, executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, told reporters that the agency would wait to see the report before making any changes. The Port Authority operates the three major airports in the New York area, including LaGuardia.
The 15-page report offers the most comprehensive presentation the N.T.S.B. has issued detailing the factors that led to the March 22 collision, but it is still preliminary, and the board has yet to reach a conclusion about what caused the accident. Similar investigations usually take about a year.
Still, the report did answer some key questions about the first deadly accident at LaGuardia in more than three decades. That included what role air traffic controllers played that night and what the people in the fire truck heard before the collision. The accident killed both pilots of Air Canada Flight 8646 and sent 39 passengers, as well as the two firefighters in the truck, to hospitals.
The report details how the convoy of emergency vehicles, which was responding to a separate incident involving a United Airlines plane, made multiple attempts to contact the air traffic control tower to seek permission to cross the runway. The attempts began more than 90 seconds before the collision.
Truck 1 had not been the intended lead vehicle in the convoy. Originally, a tool truck that went by the call sign Truck 7 was in front. But Truck 7’s first attempt to reach the tower was blocked by other radio communications. After a second attempt, its drivers switched places with Truck 1, which took over the lead position and, with it, responsibility for making contact with air traffic control.
In the tower, two controllers were on duty, as is standard for the overnight shift at LaGuardia. But according to the report, in the minutes leading up to the collision, only one controller was managing both the airplanes and the ground vehicles. The second controller had been helping the United Airlines plane find its way back to a gate.
About 20 seconds before the collision, according to the report, Truck 1 got permission from air traffic control to cross Runway 4, along with the rest of the convoy. At that moment, the Air Canada jet was in the final seconds of its descent toward the runway and only 130 feet above the ground, according to the N.T.S.B.’s report.
Seconds after that, the controller began urgently calling on the fire truck to “Stop, Truck 1, stop!” But the truck did not stop. According to the report, it accelerated.
Farther back in the convoy, the driver of Truck 7 — the tool truck that was originally intended to be the lead vehicle — heard the controller’s command. Seconds later, she saw the oncoming plane and called “stop, stop, stop” to the drivers of Truck 1, according to the report. There are no recordings of the communications between the emergency vehicles, investigators said.
The fire truck’s turret operator recalled hearing an order to “stop, stop, stop” on the tower frequency, but did not initially realize that it was intended for his vehicle, according to interviews conducted by investigators. It clicked when he heard “Truck 1, stop stop stop,” but at that point, the vehicle had already entered the runway.
The report said that in the moments before the crash, the fire truck turned left — away from the oncoming plane. But it was not enough to avoid impact.
Police in Boston are searching for a missing 12-year-old girl from Dorchester.
La’Niya Johnson-Skinner was last seen Friday in the area of Mascot Street in Dorchester, police said Thursday.
She is described as a 4’10, 120-pound Black girl with medium brown skin and dark brown hair she wears in a bun, the Boston Police Department said.
When she was last seen, she was wearing a black Nike sweatshirt, a baby blue shirt with a Boston Renaissance Charter Public School logo, black leggings, brown sandals and a pink and black Elite backpack.
Anyone with information is asked to call 911 or 617-343-4712. Anonymous tips can also be left by calling 1-800-494-8477, by texting “TIP” to 27463, or by visiting the Boston Police Department’s website.
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