There’s a lot of information we still don’t know about the investigation into Hunter Biden.
One of the questions that have been hanging out there for years is what happened in the investigation in relation to the gun that Hunter Biden obtained back in 2018, which his then-girlfriend/brother’s widow threw away in the trash by a school? The gun was later recovered.
But as Politico noted:
But a curious thing happened at the time: Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.
The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.
The Secret Service says it has no record of its agents investigating the incident, and Joe Biden, who was not under protection at the time, said through a spokesperson he has no knowledge of any Secret Service involvement.
It looked like the Secret Service may have intervened on behalf of Hunter.
Then there was also the question of the 4473 form that Hunter Biden had filled out in order to buy the gun where he declared that he was not “an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance,” despite the fact that he himself later admitted he w as.
So that naturally raised a lot of questions as to what was the status of any investigation into Hunter for not telling the truth on the form which is a crime and why the Secret Service intervened. Blogger and investigative reporter David Codrea tried to get answers with a FOIA request.
But in a ruling on Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras held that while the public interest was “significant,” Hunter Biden’s “privacy interest” as a private person was “remarkably strong.” Contreras made this finding despite the fact that Hunter is Joe Biden’s son, has done numerous interviews, and even wrote a book about his struggle with drugs.
Contreras said Hunter Biden’s discussion of his drug problems in his memoir did not diminish his privacy interest in any records about the episode.
“Disclosure would reveal whether Hunter Biden was criminally investigated by ATF,” the judge wrote. “An individual’s public disclosure of information that could be potentially incriminating in a general sense does not reduce his privacy interest in whether he was the subject of a particular federal criminal investigation by a particular agency.”
Fascinating how Hunter Biden is entitled to privacy, but the FBI is leaking all over the place when it comes to President Donald Trump and moves against his allies. We saw leaked reports about an alleged nuclear document to make Trump look bad. That, of course, is completely improper. We also saw that before subpoenas and warrants were dropped on many of Trump’s allies, the media had been tipped off. Trump and his allies didn’t seem to be entitled to privacy or the presumption of innocence, at least not in the eyes of the FBI.
While there are no doubt privacy questions when it comes to Hunter Biden, this decision leaves people wondering why the decisions all seem to go one way; why no action seems to have been taken when maybe it would have had he not been Joe Biden’s son.
I’d also note another interesting coincidence. Contreras is also the presiding judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. He was the guy who former FBI official Peter Strzok was texting Lisa Page about in 2016, trying to arrange a party to have a meeting with him.
“Rudy is on the [FISC]!” Page texted Strzok on July 25, 2016. “Did you know that? Just appointed two months ago.”
“I did,” Strzok responded. “I need to get together with him.”
“[He] said he’d gotten on a month or two ago at a graduation party we were both at.”
Strzok and Page, who reportedly had a romantic relationship, even discussed planning a dinner party with the express purpose of providing cover for a meeting with Contreras.
“[REDACTED] suggested a social setting with others would probably be better than a one on one meeting,” Strzok told Page. “I’m sorry, I’m just going to have to invite you to that cocktail party.”
“Have to come up with some other work people cover for action,” Strzok added.
“Why more?” Page responded. “Six is a perfectly fine dinner party.”
It remains unclear whether the party ever took place.
That raises even more questions about what’s going on here — and whether there was any bias involved in the decision.