The Josh Hammer Report

Josh Hammer

Newsweek Senior Editor-at-Large And Host,
"The Josh Hammer Show"

Welcome back! Here are some highlights from the last week.

My most recent column analyzed last Thursday's breaking news: U.S. Attorney (and now-Special Counsel) David Weiss has finally indicted presidential prodigal son Hunter Biden on three firearms-related offenses. This is obviously huge news for a number of reasons, not least because of the timing of the indictment, as many Democrats and leading progressives urge the octogenarian commander-in-chief not to run for re-election. But Weiss's indictment is a sham: Hunter's gun crimes, though blatant black-letter legal violations, are perhaps the least damaging of all his various misdeeds. That leads to some important questions. Is Weiss's "investigation" stopping here—and, if so, what about Hunter's corrupt foreign business dealings, his legal implications pertaining to the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and so forth? Ultimately, I argued, the resolution of this mess will tell us a lot about the true nature of the Biden Regime. If Hunter is indeed let off scot-free with no prison time, as many of us fear, then conservatives crying foul about our "two-tier" system of justice will be fully vindicated.

My most recent podcast episode featured guests Jerry Dunleavy and James Hasson, coauthors of the new bestselling book Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End. We discussed the myriad ways in which President Joe Biden epically botched the United States' 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, as well as the all-too-predictable chain of events that followed the disastrous U.S. exit— from China to Russia/Ukraine and elsewhere. True, many of us called for the U.S. to get out of that strategically unimportant, third-world Islamist backwater for many years, but the simple reality is that the withdrawal could have been handled in a competent manner. Alas, under the "leadership" of President Biden, we simply did not act in anything remotely resembling a competent fashion; in fact, at the time, I even called for Biden's impeachment over his handling of the mess. The episode finished, as is customary, with our rapid-fire "Hammertime" segment. You can listen to that episode on Apple, Spotify or here.

In terms of other media hits and appearances since our last newsletter, I recorded a number of CenterClip op-eds (on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's (R-Calif.) announced impeachment inquiry, Sen. Mitt Romney's (R-Utah) surprising retirement announcement, the UAW strike, President Biden's appalling ransom payment/prisoner exchange with Iran, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's present trip to the U.S.); co-hosted (as always) the last two episodes of the Edmund Burke Foundation's "NatCon Squad" podcast"; joined "The Jason Rantz Show" on AM 770 KTTH (Seattle) to break down Hunter Biden's firearms indictment; joined Dave Rubin's "The Rubin Report" for the Friday week-in-review roundtable panel; joined Jesse Kelly on The First for a special episode, "Broken America: Old and Aging Politicians"; and spoke for both the Cornell Law School and Syracuse University College of Law Federalist Society chapters on the topic of "Fighting the Big Tech Menace."

Our additional highlighted right-leaning Newsweek op-eds from the past week include selections from Alan Dershowitz, John Yoo and John Shu, Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Barry Rosen, and Lila Rose.

Thanks for subscribing! Please share the word about this newsletter throughout your social circles. We'll be back next week. And for my Jewish readers, I wish you a belated shana tovah umetukah and an easy and meaningful Yom Kippur fast.

Spotlight

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Hunter's Gun Indictment Is Moment of Truth for Biden Regime

Thursday's indictment of presidential prodigal son Hunter Biden on three gun-related criminal counts is the latest twist in the long, winding, and rapidly escalating saga that is the Biden crime family.

The indictment, served up by U.S. Attorney—and now "special counsel," despite the fact 28 Code of Federal Regulations Sec. 600.3 requires that a special counsel be "selected from outside the United States Government"—David C. Weiss, comes a month and a half after Weiss' obfuscatory plea agreement was summarily rejected by Judge Maryellen Noreika. That prior plea deal, curiously, would have handled the same gun crimes for which Hunter has now been indicted with a slap-on-the-wrist pretrial diversion agreement. Fact is, Hunter transparently lied that he was "not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance" when he filled out a Firearms Transaction Record to purchase a Colt revolver in 2018. It is indisputable that Hunter was a drug addict at the time he purchased the firearm; he openly admitted as much in his ill-advised 2021 memoir.

True, the third count of Weiss' indictment, invoking the federal provision (18 U.S. Code Sec. 922(g)(3)) that criminalizes possession of a firearm when one is "an unlawful user of, or addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance," is arguably unconstitutional under the Supreme Court's current Second Amendment jurisprudence; in fact, just last month, a panel of the conservative-leaning U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held just that. But Delaware is not part of the Fifth Circuit, which only covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi. A criminal defense on such grounds, moreover, would put someone named "Biden" in the highly ironic position of advancing a maximalist, National Rifle Association-style Second Amendment argument. And even if Hunter did make such an argument, the first two counts of the indictment would remain untouched. In sum, the three criminal counts could in theory—and assuredly only in theory—yield up to 25 years in the slammer.

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