As we reported last Thursday, Hunter Biden's criminal defense attorneys contend that the failure of Hunter's plea agreement and the filing of more serious charges against him in California are the result of "selective and vindictive prosecution" and a "breach of the separation of powers." The defense team filed a motion to that effect in Delaware and plan to file the same motion in California, and are requesting an evidentiary hearing regarding the same.

During Hunter's arraignment and status conference in the California case, his attorney Abbe Lowell repeatedly asked prosecutor Leo Wise if the prosecution had turned over all of their investigative material in the case. Wise replied that as far as he knew, all potentially exculpatory material had been turned over. Perhaps Lowell had a sense that there could be some negative information from the investigation that wasn't yet public, given what's contained in the government's latest filing.

It turns out that while preparing for Hunter's July court appearance FBI investigators decided to take photographs of the handgun Hunter's then-girlfriend ditched in a dumpster in Delaware back in 2018, and which was seized by Delaware State Police at that time and placed into evidence. Meaning, the firearm and its storage pouch have been in a sealed evidence bag, in a Delaware State Police vault, since October 2018. When FBI investigators opened the evidence, they found a "white powdery substance," had it tested, and, surprise, surprise, it was cocaine.

From the government's filing:

In 2023, FBI investigators pulled sealed evidence from the state police vault to take photographs of the defendant’s firearm. After opening the evidence, FBI investigators observed a white powdery substance on the defendant’s brown leather pouch that had held the defendant’s firearm in October 2018. Based on their training and experience, investigators believed that this substance was likely cocaine and that this evidence would corroborate the messages that investigators had obtained which showed the defendant buying and using drugs in October 2018. An FBI chemist subsequently analyzed the residue and determined that it was cocaine. To be clear, investigators literally found drugs on the pouch where the defendant had kept his gun.

Earlier in the response, prosecutors set out the chain of events leading to the handgun being placed into evidence with the Delaware State Police:

On October 12, 2018, the defendant entered a gun store in Wilmington, Delaware. After surveying the inventory of guns and weapons that the store had available for purchase, the defendant chose to purchase the following items, among others:

• A Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver with serial number RA 551363 (left photo);
• An HKS Speedloader for a .38 special revolver (center photo), which, as the name suggests, is an accessory to enable the gun user to rapidly reload it by loading multiple chambers of the revolver simultaneously); and,
• 25 cartridges of Hornady “American Gunner” ammunition (right photo)

Eleven days later, on October 23, 2018, the defendant’s then-girlfriend discovered the defendant’s gun in his open, unlocked vehicle (that had its windows down) inside his brown leather pouch along with a box of ammunition and speed loader. She discarded these items in a trash can behind a grocery store in Wilmington, Delaware. The defendant’s gun, speed loader, 23 rounds of ammunition, and brown leather pouch were found by an elderly man who routinely collected recyclables from trash cans in the area. The police later obtained the gun case from the defendant and obtained the defendant’s gun, the ammunition contained in the ammo box, speed loader, and brown leather pouch from the older man. These items were placed in an evidence vault by state authorities and no charges were brought at that time.

Obviously, for those drugs to be linked to Hunter in the courtroom there would need to be evidence that the older man isn't the one who had powder cocaine and deposited it on the leather pouch, but it's not a leap to believe that Hunter's the one who was handling cocaine and his gun at the same time.

The rest of the response is good reading, as the prosecution responds to Hunter's illogical and nonsensical contentions with the sarcasm they deserve. The prosecution points out that Hunter's team hasn't even attempted to identify a similarly situated person who was not prosecuted for the same crimes, and fails to show any evidence of a discriminatory purpose, saying: 

Further, he did not establish discriminatory purpose because none of the politicians he reads on “Truth Social” approved the indictment, and tweets by political opponents of the President did not cause current Executive Branch officials to seek an indictment against the President’s son.

The response can be read in its entirety below.

Jan 16 2024 Government Motion Hunter by Jennifer Van Laar on Scribd