A delicious court filing this week in the case of United States vs. Biden in Delaware leaves Abbe Lowell, pricy lawyer to the president’s son, with egg all over his face.
It was written by Derek Hines, one of two new pit-bull prosecutors subbed in at the last minute to take over the Hunter Biden gun case in Delaware in the wake of explosive revelations by IRS whistleblowers that the investigation had been compromised by political favoritism and obstruction.
Judging by the tone of the new prosecution filings, miracles might happen. Hunter could end up being treated like every other poor schmuck without a powerful daddy — although I wouldn’t bet your house on it.
In the meantime, it’s popcorn time, as Lowell is fighting with Hines about Hunter’s abandoned laptop.
Hunter has been making all of his 16 lawyers in cases across the country go through this charade of pretending that his laptop is not his laptop, is probably not real, or was it stolen, or maybe hacked?
It’s hard to keep track. The lawyers now swim in the same soup of delusion that Hunter and his father do.
It does make life more difficult for Lowell, as he has to write voluminous footnotes on all his filings explaining that, while he might be suing this person for breach of privacy or that person for stealing Hunter’s property, it doesn’t mean it’s actually his client’s laptop.
Take Footnote 4 in his latest Delaware filing: “Questions remain about the provenance and total authenticity of the data on the laptop image and hard drive the government seized, as both had been reviewed and likely altered.”
In denial
It must have been the Russians!
Footnote 17: “Mr. Biden does not concede or accept the prosecution’s version of events concerning the authenticity of this Apple device.”
Denial is a river in Mexico — as some wag said last week after Joe Biden’s “my memory is fine” press conference.
This state of self-deception over the reality of Hunter’s waterlogged Apple MacBook Pro led to this week’s humiliation for Lowell.
He had demanded from Hines in discovery an exact forensic copy of the “alleged” laptop that the FBI has had in its possession since December 2019, when two agents picked it up from the Delaware computer repair shop where Hunter had abandoned it eight months earlier while drunk and stinking of cigars.
He stiffed repairman John Paul Mac Isaac on the bill, too.
Maybe Hunter’s “Sugar Brother” Kevin Morris could find the 85 bucks to repay Mac Isaac, instead of throwing good money after bad at fancy data analysts telling Morris what he wishes were true.
Presumably in aid of concocting this parallel reality about the tainted laptop, Lowell went to great lengths in October to specify exactly what he required from the prosecutors in discovery: “We want to ensure the data we receive is an identical copy as you have it and that the data will retain its native forensic properties (e.g., time and date stamps, file paths, operative system characteristics, user profile information, etc.)” and that the “data loaded on the hard drive is complete and identical in every shape and manner to that obtained by the FBI when it acquired possession” of the laptop and hard drive.
He got exactly what he asked for. And now he’s complaining to the judge because the laptop is a dog’s breakfast, a Hobbesian digital chaos that echoes Hunter’s life.
A true “laptop from hell,” per Donald Trump’s coinage.
It is impossible to make sense of any of it without hours of aggravation, amid the constant threat of being ambushed by hundreds of selfies of Hunter’s erect penis, sometimes adorned with M&Ms, or flanked by a ruler, or being massaged by a pair of dainty feet, or simply flopped into a pizza in a hotel room in Vegas.
Lowell’s lot in life
What cruel punishment for anyone that has to wade through the muck. And now it is Abbe Lowell’s lot. Let’s hope the Sugar Brother is paying him well.
Lowell has been complaining to the judge that he is “stuck searching an abyss of data (more than 220 gigabytes),” and “has spent hours combing through a forensic image of the device,” and that the prosecutors have “left buried the pertinent photos within a production of a voluminous, undifferentiated files.”
He could always ask his client.
Hines coolly replied: “The government accommodated this request.”
Hines’ passive-aggressive motion has been the subject of some mirth among legal circles in New York this week.
“It’s a big ‘f–k you. Strong letter to follow,” said one former Manhattan US attorney. “AUSA Derek Hines just took Abbe Lowell’s pants down and embarrassed him. He should be mortified.”
That’s what comes from trying to flog the Sugar Brother’s dead horse.
Morris and Hunter have convinced themselves that the laptop is actually “Rudy’s mixed tapes,” a fiendish compilation by Rudy Giuliani.
Forget that Giuliani is a technological Luddite who can’t figure out how to stop butt-dialing reporters, he’s actually a computer genius who hoodwinked the FBI’s digital forensic examiners from the crack Computer Analysis and Response Team who verified the authenticity and ownership of Hunter’s laptop back in November 2019, and assessed that “it was not manipulated in any way.”
What diabolical powers Giuliani has to trick the FBI into using financial records and other data to pinpoint Hunter’s location on April 12, 2019, in the hours before 6:50 p.m., when he dropped off the laptop with Mac Isaac, to a cigar bar around the corner.
The Sikar Cigar Lounge on Delaware Avenue in Wilmington is just a two-minute stagger from the sadly now defunct Mac Shop in Trolley Square, Wilmington.
‘Open’ case
“I’m glad you’re still open,” Mac Isaac recalls Hunter telling him that night. “I just came from the cigar bar, and they told me about your shop, but I had to hurry because you close at 7.”
Morris’ army of tech experts now have more material to work with for his fantasy production of “the Russians hacked my alleged laptop,” but Lowell is left in a quandary.
He wants prosecutors to hand over the laptop material in “searchable e-discovery format,” with an index and “Bates stamps,” which is sort of like Post-it Notes for lawyers.
It must have given Hines a certain grim delight to write to the judge: “There are no Bates stamps because the defendant demanded the data in its original, unaltered format.”
Lowell’s over-the-top demands for discovery already had the government produce 1.2 million pages of material and he still wants more.
He wants witness interview memoranda, grand jury testimony, the voting history of grand jurors, FBI-302 records of interviews and FD-1023s, FBI reports from confidential human sources.
In the Delaware investigation into Hunter, a previously hidden FD-1023 inexplicably was withheld from IRS investigators, in which were recorded allegations, from a long-term trusted, paid confidential FBI source, that then-VP Joe Biden and Hunter allegedly each were paid a $5 million bribe by the owner of Burisma.
Investigators never had the chance to verify the allegation, but since Hunter is not charged with bribery, just tax fraud and lying on a federal gun form, the request for the FD-1023 looks like a political fishing expedition.
“That is simply not how criminal discovery works,” replied Hines.
The Delaware US Attorney’s Office has changed its attitude since Hunter’s sweetheart deal was shot down. Now it is not only prosecuting the case, but insulting Lowell as well.
Hunter’s legal brain trust have what they asked for, but they can’t handle the truth.
The laptop is real.
Nobody else could have created such an abomination.
It is Hunter’s greatest work of art.
