Judge Unseals Search Warrants for Hunter Biden’s Laptop in Criminal Case, Defense Moves to Force Government to Provide Evidence

Jaime Halscott

Jaime T. Halscott

Jaime T. Halscott is the Managing Partner of Appeals Law Group, a Florida-based law firm concentrating in criminal appeals, civil appeals, post-conviction relief, habeas corpus petitions, and executive clemency petitions.  He can he reached at 407-255-2165 or www.appealslawgroup.com

 

Hunter Biden Cigarette

The Delaware judge presiding over the criminal case involving Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, has decided to unseal information regarding warrants used by the Department of Justice to access Hunter Biden’s data. This decision came in response to a request from an independent journalist.

Hunter Biden’s attorneys have also moved to compel the Government to turn over evidence. You can read the motion HERE:

Docket # 23-CR-00061 – Document 83 – Mr. Biden’s Motion to Compel Discovery and Set Discovery Deadlines filed 1-30-2024

Judge Maryellen Noreika ordered the unsealing of four warrants, disclosing specific dates on which the government obtained various types of data belonging to Hunter Biden. The unsealed warrants also confirmed previously reported details about Hunter Biden’s laptop, which had fallen into the hands of federal investigators.

Special Counsel David Weiss, responsible for overseeing the prosecutions of Hunter Biden in both the Delaware case and a tax-related case in California, was leading the government’s investigations when the warrants were issued.

One of the warrants revealed that in 2019, Weiss’s team searched Hunter Biden’s Apple MacBook Pro, left at a computer store by Hunter himself. The laptop and its hard drive were subsequently distributed to various individuals and media outlets in 2020, exposing a significant amount of Hunter Biden’s personal information. Despite this, Hunter Biden has never acknowledged the authenticity of the information and has claimed through lawsuits that it was manipulated.

The unsealed warrants provide details on the execution dates and approved items for retrieval:

1. Aug. 30, 2019: Warrant to search a hard drive containing information from Hunter Biden’s Apple iCloud account.
2. Dec. 13, 2019: Warrant to search an Apple MacBook Pro laptop and a Western Digital external hard drive.
3. July 11, 2020: Warrant for Apple iCloud backup account data for four devices.
4. Dec. 7, 2023: Warrant involving the review of “digital evidence” with no physical evidence seized.

The first warrant compelled Apple to disclose all of Hunter Biden’s iCloud data related to tax evasion, failure to file or pay tax returns, and filing false returns since Jan. 1, 2014. The second and third warrants had similar scopes.

The fourth warrant, issued on Dec. 4, 2023, and executed on Dec. 7, the same day Hunter Biden was indicted in California on nine tax-related charges, contained no attachments and was vague. This followed an unsuccessful attempt to strike a plea deal, with Weiss initially indicting Hunter Biden on Sept. 15, 2023, in Delaware for allegedly lying on a federal gun form about his drug addiction to purchase a revolver.

The case is pending in the United States District Court for the District of Delaware, United States v. Robert Hunter Biden, Docket # 23-CR-00061-MN.

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