A couple months ago the findings against Hunter Biden were nothing, not even worth taking to court, only under GOP pressure did the Trump appointed prosecutor take it to court. Now it seems like a big deal and 17 years (max). What happened? Why the change? Was new evidence found?

  • TechNerdWizard42@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    This is an incredibly important question to understand if you’re American or are ever in the jurisdiction of America. America is not the land of the free or equality or civil rights. Almost everybody commits a handful of crimes every day. Sometimes bigger crimes. Sometimes felony huge crimes. I’m talking ordinary people like your grandma. You know like your grandma, not actual “criminals”.

    For example when Grandma drives 45mph on the highway, that’s a misdemeanor in many places for going too slowly. Then when she fills up her big gulp and takes a few sips then tops it off, that’s criminal theft. When she sees a letter addressed to you delivered to her and opens it so she can tell you what it is, that’s a felony criminal offense with a 6 month federal prison sentence attached.

    Now the police are just snitches. If they see you do something they can ticket and/or arrest you. If you’re not doing something wrong, but don’t agree to be arrested, congratulations now you’ve actually committed another crime!

    But the end of all of this is the district attorney, the DA. The DA (the office with lots of staff and a main big head honcho) is tasked with looking at these charges, deeming what is really a crime they care about, and bringing forth charges. Of the DA got a report on your grandma committing a felony mail fraud by opening your mail, you’d hope in a sane world they’d laugh it off and ignore it. The problem is this relies on one person or a small group of people making the “right” decision which ironically is illegal itself, and choosing what charges to bring against who.

    When things are high profile, they bring all charges because they have to. Not bringing charges is against the law itself, but again is handwaved higher up because that’s the stupid system. Then it’s up to the actual judicial system to decide the criminality and the punishment, then enforce. The import take away at this point is that in the USA, you can literally be charged and arrested at anytime for anything. That is not hyperbole. If you want an example on the other side of the spectrum, look at the lawyers talking about Trumps crap. Everyone knows he’s guilty but getting a jury conviction, somewhat unlikely considering you need 12/12 in agreement. So the pundits correctly say, if we know he’s guilty they can charge him with these other random crimes and get him. If he’s in jail, who cares what for. This is done ALL THE TIME. Most famous high profile case being Al Capone. Everyone knows he was a mobster and killed people. But they couldn’t make it stick. So what do they do? Charge him with tax evasion crimes and give him the maximum penalties for everything. If they want to get you, they can get you.

    So back to Hunter. Nothing has changed as the alleged crimes. Everyone is in agreement he did it. His crimes are nothingburgers. Lying on the gun app is something most rednecks do all the time, it’s a formality paper. And funny enough, they’re happy with him losing his gun rights for drug use, the second amendment doesn’t apply to him I guess. That lie on the application is the first crime. He’s guilty. It is usually a slap on the wrist, no time, no fine. But it CAN be prison time. So for him, it is.

    The other things are tax issues. He misreported and misfiled taxes for many years. Daddy paid the back taxes, he paid Daddy back. In most cases the IRS is happy with that, sometimes they assess a big fine. Everyone goes on their way. But the IRS charges can impose federal prison. And for him it is.

    I understand it’s a large wall of text. I understand it goes against most of what Americans believe. And most will never experience it. But it is there. And you need to know it.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      That was excellent!

      Question about the back taxes. Why in the world would it be illegal to let someone else pay them and then reimburse them later?

      • Jaccident@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        It isn’t. The point is that accruing back taxes requires payment and may, at the discretion of the IRS, mandate a criminal charge. He wasn’t charge at the time because he paid, but he could have been. So now they want him to have been.

        However I think neither party really wants things to go this way, and Republicans are going to see lots of retaliatory investigation and charges brought over missed payments etc. should they pursue this.

        A waste of time and money, doesn’t improve anything in the world, just creates more division. Basically the GOP motto.

        • shalafi@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Don’t think missing payments is illegal, they just fine you to hell and back, but it’s not criminal. From further reading I’m gathering there was some low-key fraud, and that they will nail you for.

          • Jaccident@lemm.ee
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            11 months ago

            Accruing back taxes can happen for a lot of reasons, one of which would be deliberate under reporting, which if a form of fraud. Hence why the IRS has the latitude to recommend charges if they feel the actions were significant and deliberate.

            It’s important to remember that Trump’s current case he’s arguing he didn’t have the Mens Rea for deliberate fraud, so it’s weird to see GOP members discounting that argument as invalid with Biden.

    • Fraylor@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      Just to piggyback with my own anecdote: do you think this ends when you’re finally in prison? NOPE. Same deal on the inside. Just change misdemeanor with “minor infraction” and felony with “major infraction.”

      Source: ex CO.

      Minor infractions were at my discretion and unless you were being a dick about it summarily ignored my by me. Majors I had no choice, no matter how stupid. Fortunately though it’s only on paper that I didn’t have a choice.

      • lastjunkieonearth@lemdro.id
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        11 months ago

        Fortunately though it’s only on paper that I didn’t have a choice

        Thanks for sharing. What do you mean by this?

        • Fraylor@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          If I knew with confidence that what they were doing wasn’t harming anyone, and wasn’t gang related bullshit I’d just look the other way. The department can’t fault you for “missing” things.

          Example would be catching someone tattooing. This often ended up with time in solitary. But if it wasn’t a gang tat, and the inmates weren’t dicks about being caught/immediately flushing all the evidence I’d just kick the tattoo artist out of the cell and the half finished tattoo is enough punishment. They’ll get it finished one way or another but it’s more funny to me than sending them to the hole, and they appreciate it most of the time. If my supervisor happened to be with me, or watching me though, you were cooked. Most understood the fact that I would protect my income over them being as I wouldn’t give a fuck literally any other time, but my hands have been tied more than once when shit should have slid by.

    • lhx@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      One small nitpick: it’s completely legal for a DA decide to charge/not charge for most (all?) crimes. Look up “prosecutorial discretion”.

  • Silverseren@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    There’s no new evidence. Republicans are basically actively pursuing max level penalties for charges that are routinely just assessed with a fine or other punishment.

    For example, the tax issues, normally the IRS just levy a fine for the unpaid tax crimes and a bit more to be paid, then they’re fine with it. Since they’re getting their money and then some.

    There technically can be criminal charges and jail time assigned to said unpaid taxes, it’s just the IRS normally doesn’t care to pursue that. Since it doesn’t get them their money, which is all that’s really at issue.

    But Republicans are pushing for the max level jail time charges for these crimes now, rather than how they are normally dealt with.

  • Pratai@lemmy.ca
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    11 months ago

    Nothing. As usual. Unless you read conservative propaganda, that is. In that case, he’s trying to dominate the world with a huge dong.

  • rayyy@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Not sure. Did they find out why he got 2 billion dollars from the Saudis? Oh, wait…

  • Match!!@pawb.social
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    11 months ago

    dude did some combination of drugs / owning a gun / tax evasion, so he should go to jail ig

  • AnonTwo@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    It’s basically regular Rich person crime, but they did something wrong during the trial proceedings that would normally lead to a deal to lower the sentence.

  • Echo5@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    From what I’ve seen by casually scraping news, evidence of massive corruption in the Biden family continues to be uncovered; I haven’t seen much in these comments about the juicy overseas dealings stuff, the other charges mentioned here are more small fry (but still worth prosecuting). I encourage you to look up the details of the situation yourself because you’re gonna get heavily biased answers from social media, especially since this is a political issue. I’ll probably catch flak just for saying that.

    A post from a couple months ago was asking something similar about all the Trump business; one commenter mentioned that it was because one better get everything right before one guns for the king, and it feels like a similar thing here.

    • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.caOP
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      11 months ago

      I love it when “crime family” is said because it shows how you’ve fallen for confusing charges against Hunter to be something against a whole family. It’s both lol worthy and cringe worthy.

      • Echo5@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        Maybe I misunderstood your question because I read it as referring to all charges made against him, and there’s definitely a corruption case building against both father and son here, which I assumed would fall under the scope of your question. But if you didn’t want to know that case was progressing then there’s been a miscommunication.

        • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.caOP
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          11 months ago

          There it is again. Conspiracy theories have duped you into thinking one person is the family.

          • Echo5@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            I can see here that whatever I say is gonna be misconstrued and strawmanned. I was trying to provide a helpful answer but it seems that’s not what is wanted here.

            • BarqsHasBite@lemmy.caOP
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              11 months ago

              You are literally trying to pin actions of one onto an entire family. You fell for conspiracy theories and logical fallacies.

    • sharpiemarker@feddit.de
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      11 months ago

      If your answer uses the phrase “Biden Family” I’m not sure I’d expect an unbiased answer.

      • Echo5@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        You’re correct, and I’m not going to say I don’t have a bias. But the result I wanted to produce is a more-informed perspective by encouraging people to do their own research, especially after asking a question in a forum where you’ll mainly get answers along the same line of thinking. The rest is just headlines.

        • paradiso@lemm.ee
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          11 months ago

          It seems these posts follow the reddit method. If you aren’t left leaning, you will be downvoted and shunned. No nuanced discussion. Only red v blue. I’m right, you are wrong.

      • Echo5@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        What’s a credible source(s) you’re going to believe and not just say that it’s propaganda for XYZ agenda? Sounds like your mind is already made up on this matter

    • Froyn@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      the juicy overseas dealings stuff

      You’re talking about the $2 Billion he got from the Saudis for selling Israel’s Defense Dossier, right?

      • Echo5@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        I hadn’t heard of that but if you’ve got a link to a sauce I’ll check it out.

        • Froyn@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          What’s a credible source(s) you’re going to believe and not just say that it’s propaganda for XYZ agenda?

  • Throwaway@lemm.ee
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    11 months ago

    Theres been some leaks over Chinese bribery, but as with Trump, anonymous sources and hype.

    I would ignore it.