The judge in Hunter Biden’s gun case issued a series of pretrial rulings Friday, handing wins to both sides and setting the contours of the upcoming trial.
Federal Judge Maryellen Noreika sided with prosecutors on a key question about what they need to prove about Biden’s drug use when he bought a gun in 2018.
To win a conviction, she said they’ll need to show that he was generally using drugs at the time, and not that he specifically used drugs on the day he bought the gun. Biden has advocated for the narrower scope of the law to be applied.
But she also decided to allow Biden’s lawyers to challenge the authenticity of specific texts from his infamous laptop that will be presented to the jury by special counsel David Weiss’ team.
Biden’s lawyers maintain that there are serious questions about the legitimacy of the material. Prosecutors said in court that they only want to introduce a small slice of the laptop material at trial.
“What we’re using from the laptop are messages that will be corroborated by a witness who will testify that she sent those messages,” prosecutor Derek Hines said. “This isn’t some vast array of messages.”
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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