Judging Freedom - Hunter Biden in court_ Russian try dogfight US jets_ Trump rape case latest

Episode Date: May 1, 2023

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Hi everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Monday, May 1st. Where's the time go? 2023. It's about 1015 or 1020 in the morning here on the east coast of the United States. Here are your hot topics for today, an interesting variety of hot topics. I'm going to talk about Hunter Biden in court. Yes, Hunter Biden in court as we speak about Russian pilots buzzing American pilots over Syria. What the hell are American pilots doing in Syria? About the latest that happened this morning, just an hour ago, in the E. Jean Carroll versus Donald Trump rape trial in New York City, and about a surprise decision involving the assault weapons ban in Illinois. Truly a surprise. So Hunter Biden, who is of course the son of the President of the United States and has a variety of legal woes, not the least of which was this series of events that led up to his bringing of a laptop to a blind laptop repairman. You almost can't make this stuff up. And all the personal information that was in there, including potential criminal matters. But on top of all of that,

he has a paternity suit. Hunter Biden apparently had a relationship with a woman in Arkansas, and he fathered a child with that lady and acknowledged paternity and was paying her an agreed upon amount. And then he made the mistake of filing an application with the court saying that he had a material change in his income and he wanted to pay less. Now, when you do that, the judge's reaction is going to be, okay, show me the material change in your income. Show me your checkbook or show me your whatever you filed with the IRS. Well, before the judge said that, the mother of the daughter said, show me the material change in your income. And the judge ordered Hunter Biden to furnish the financial documents to this lady and to her lawyers so that they could have an idea of what they're dealing with. They're dealing with somebody that's making a few million a year

or a few thousand a month, which is it? He did not comply with that judicial order, whereupon the lawyer for the lady asked the judge to hold Hunter Biden in contempt, which judges regularly do when people don't comply with their orders. Instead of holding him in contempt, the judge ordered a hearing and ordered both sides to be there, and they're both there. We can show you pictures of them walking in. This is the mother of the child, the lady there in the blue with blonde hair and the sunglasses, and there she is just a few minutes ago in Batesville, Arkansas, and there's Hunter Biden. He's the third one going up the steps there. You're going to see him shake hands with that uniformed court officer. It's kind of hard to see his face, but there he

is, the fellow that's shaking hands with her. So they're all in the courthouse. These matrimonial cases, I've presided over thousands of them. They are not pleasant experiences for the lawyers, for the litigants, or for the judge. There is no jury. Sometimes the judge just does the right thing. Sometimes the judge has to go through a lot of mathematics and figure out who is entitled to what. But of course, you have to be open and honest with the judge. If you hide information from the judge, you've committed a crime because the judge has to have relevant, accurate financial information in front of them. We don't know what's going on in the courtroom. The judge could very well say, go into my jury room, which is now empty, and settle this case once and for all. Mr. Biden,

I think you probably have more serious legal woes on your mind. Do you really want to keep coming back here to Arkansas to resolve this, or do you want to end it once and for all? The baby is now four years old under Arkansas law. He would have to pay for the support of that child until the child is 18, and then for college if the child goes to college from 18 to 22. So as more than that happens, we'll let you know. Normally, this would not be a story, but for the fact that he is, of course, the president's son, and there are these huge other stories ready to burst on the scene. What was in that laptop? Did he engage in income tax evasion? Did he funnel millions of dollars to his

father through other relatives? Was that lawful? Did the father receive that money? The father was now the president of the United States. Did he report those funds on his own income tax returns? We don't know the answers to any of that. My Republican buddies are suggesting that this is a huge scam to enrich Joe Biden and that it's all criminal and it's all going to come down like a house of cards. I'm not willing to buy into that yet, but there does seem to be a there there. Just to refresh your memory, he is being investigated for income tax evasion by the federal prosecutors in Wilmington, Delaware, which is where he was living at the time of the alleged income tax evasion. Joe Biden has decided

to keep the Donald Trump appointed U.S. attorney in place in Wilmington. So that person is conducting the investigation. It's not being conducted by an appointee of Joe Biden. This is very unusual. Normally when a president comes in, Trump did this, Obama did this, the Bushes did this, Reagan did it. Normally when a president comes into office, he asks the U.S. attorney, the chief federal prosecutor in each federal district. Sometimes the district is contiguous with the state. There's one federal district for New Jersey. There's one federal district for Delaware. There are four federal districts for New York. There are six federal districts for California. It has to do with population and geography. So normally the incoming president asks the chief federal prosecutor,

called the U.S. attorney, in each federal district to resign so that the president can put his own appointee in there. Joe Biden did it, but he exempted the chief federal prosecutor from Delaware from the obligation to resign. That is a Trump appointee investigating Hunter Biden. More, of course, as we get it on all this. Russian pilots and American pilots were in non-lethal, non-weapon firing, sort of maneuvering, almost dogfight-like movements over Syria. The Russians are involved in the civil war in Syria. They're involved because Vladimir Putin wants them involved. That's the law in Russia.

The president of Russia wants you involved in a war. You get involved in the war. What the hell are American fighter pilots doing in Syria? So American generals have been complaining that Russian fighter pilots are engaging in provocative moves over Syria, which of course they can do. They are openly and notoriously supporting the government of Syria, which is openly and notoriously involved in a civil war that's been going on for about 15 years now. The president of Syria, the eye doctor, Assad, medical school in the United States, I think Georgetown, is pretty much an outcast. But suddenly people, leaders in the Middle East are starting to say nice things about him, not about his politics, but they want to sort of

welcome him back into the family of nations in the hope that there will be more peace in the Middle East. In case you didn't notice it, peace is breaking out a little bit in the Middle East. There's now an Israeli embassy in Saudi Arabia, and there are other things going on there that would never have been imaginable 10 or 15 or even five years ago, but not for the United States. The United States has continued to be involved in this war in Syria. Has Congress declared this war? No. Has Congress authorized this war? No. How long have we had troops there? Going back since George W. Bush. I'm not in favor of Russian planes, jet fighters engaging in provocative movements with American jet fighters. But I'm not in favor, and I'm going to guess most of you are not in favor, of American jet fighters being in Syria and engaging in these provocative moves with the Russian jet fighters.

Why are they there? Because America wants to build empire. That's why they're there. My column at JudgeKnapp.com last week was entitled, We Are Fighting Putin for Empire, and we are. Putin wants influence on his borders. You can't blame him. We want influence everywhere all over the world. How many military installations does the United States have in Italy? Take a guess. 100. 100 American military installations, naval and air force and army in Italy, including nuclear weapons aimed at Moscow. All right. That's a topic for another time. But it makes my blood boil when American generals complain that their boys, their fighter pilots, have been antagonized by

Russian boys. I understand that. I know that macho mentality. But what I don't understand and cannot condone is what the hell we're doing there in the first place. Does Syria even present the remotest threat to the national security of the United States. It does not. This morning, while Hunter Biden and the mother of his child were walking into a courthouse in Arkansas, Donald Trump's lawyers were standing in a courtroom in federal court in lower Manhattan asking for a mistrial. They were asking the federal judge, Lou Kaplan, to declare a mistrial, meaning everything that has happened so far is invalid. We reset the clock at square one. We take a week off. We come back to the same courtroom. We get a new jury and we start all

over. Wow. What the heck happened that they would do this? Their argument is the judge is ruling against Donald Trump during the trial. Well, yes, the judge makes rulings during the trial, and some have gone for the plaintiff, E. Jean Carroll, and some have gone for the defendant, Donald Trump. This is that case where a former gossip columnist, now 79 years old, claims that Donald Trump in the 1990s raped her in the dressing room, in the ladies dressing room at Bergdorf Goodman, a very high-end prominent department store in New York City. How can you bring a trial 33 years later? Well, the legislature of the state of New York opened up the window of the statute of limitations for adult survivors of sexual assault and allowed you during the course of a year, which began in December of 22. So six months ago, six more months to go in the year the statute

of limitations was opened up for any lawsuit at any time in the past for an adult survivor of a sexual assault. This is not sexual harassment and this is not children. Those windows have already been opened and now closed. So Ms. Carroll sued the president for defamation because of what he said about her and sued him because of this alleged assault in the ladies room. Wednesday on direct examination, Thursday on cross-examination. This morning, before cross-examination continued, Joe Tacopina, the lawyer for President Trump who's not in the courtroom, said, we want to ask for a mistrial because you're ruling against us too much. Well, I understand lawyers doing that. One of the ways that you create appealable issues is by forcing the judge to make a lot of rulings, particularly forcing the judge to review his own rulings. So that's what Joe Takapina is doing. Judge, you ruled against me five times and against the plaintiff once. You're biased against us. Here are all the rulings you made against us. So this forces the judge to go back on his notes and his memory and the transcripts and

reconstruct all the rulings that he made. These motions are routinely denied. But the more times you force a judge to make a ruling in a case, the more opportunity there is for the judge to make a mistake. And if you lose the case at the hands of the jury, and you can show an appellate court that the judge made a mistake, and the mistake is substantial, substantial enough to have affected the outcome of the case, then you can get a new trial. I read the transcripts of much of the cross-examination.

I thought Joe Takapina did a commendable and professional job. Did he shake her story? No. Did he get her to back down? He did not. Did he point out inconsistencies? No. He pointed out a lot of gaps in her memory, a lot of things she doesn't recall, and some

behavior that's unusual, but she steadfastly held her own ground. In fact, she held her own ground so steadfastly that my guess is that Joe Takapina spent some time over the weekend talking to his client, I think you better come into the courtroom. Now, the judge said, if Donald Trump's going to come into the courtroom, you got to give us three days notice because of all the security that will be necessary to protect him and to protect everybody else from demonstrators if he's going to be in the courtroom. They have not given that notice yet. It will not look good in front of the jury if the former president, who has not been in the courtroom at all during the trial, chooses not to testify, it will weaken his defense. But sometimes lawyers make a prudential

decision. The decision could very well be the plaintiff's case is so weak, we don't have to put the defendant on the stand. But remember, this is not a criminal case. In a criminal case, when the defendant does not take the stand, the judge looks at the jury and says, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you may not construe anything from the defendant's silence. You may not assume that if he took the stand, it would be harmful to him. You may not assume that if he took the stand, the reason he didn't take the stand is because he's probably guilty. You may not assume any of these things. In this country, the defendant has the right to remain silent. It's an absolute right, and you may construe nothing from it. That's what judges say in criminal cases. In civil cases, when the defendant doesn't take the witness stand and doesn't come into the courtroom, the jury gets the opposite charge.

You may construe whatever you want from the defendant's silence. You may assume that if he took the witness stand, his testimony would be harmful to himself and that's why he's not here. Or you may assume that he can't be bothered. Or you may assume that he thinks the case is so weak that it's not necessary for him to testify. You can draw any conclusions you want from his absence in the courtroom and his decision not to take the witness stand. That's the kind of charge that the judge will give the jury at the end of this case. My advice to the former president, go in that courtroom, take the witness stand, issue your denial, issue your explanation, and deal with the cross-examination

that will come. A surprise in Illinois. Illinois is like New Jersey when it comes to guns. It is the most heavily regulated state in the union, Illinois, New York, and New Jersey. That is until, of course, the Heller decision in which the Justice Scalia for the Supreme Court, 2005, held that the right to keep and bear arms is a personal right, doesn't belong just to the militia, the National Guard, it belongs to individuals. And then there's the McDonald case, McDonald versus Chicago, which applies the Heller decision to all the states. Then there's the Bruin case, which addresses not the right to own and keep guns in your home, but the right to carry them outside the home, in which the Supreme Court 6-3, Justice Thomas writing for the Supreme

Court, ruled that the right not only to keep but to bear arms is a personal individual right and every state in the union is a shall issue state not a may issue state meaning the presumption under the law is that every law-abiding adult in the country can buy whatever guns he wants and carry whatever guns he owns outside the home that is at least the theory of the law. Notwithstanding all of this, Illinois just enacted an assault weapon ban, or what it calls an assault weapons ban. It's really a ban on all semi-automatic rifles. An automatic rifle is a machine gun.

They've been illegal in the United States since 1934. That's where one trigger squeeze empties all the rounds in the magazine. Illegal everywhere in the U.S. since 1934. The police probably have them. The military certainly has them. Individuals cannot own them. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about semi-automatic rifles, where you pull a trigger, the round comes out, and by releasing the trigger, another round replaces the one that went out. Semi-automatic. All of those are or were illegal in Illinois on the basis of legislation just enacted and notwithstanding these Supreme Court opinions. I say were because on Friday afternoon, a federal judge outside of Chicago put a hold on the Illinois weapons ban saying, I haven't made up my mind yet, but it appears that the plaintiffs who are owners and operators of gun shops and shooting ranges and teaching facilities, teaching people how to use guns safely, will lose a lot of business because you have unconstitutionally interfered with that business.

So I'm going to put a hold on the assault weapons ban in Illinois, hallelujah, until after we hold the trial. Quite surprising for the state of Illinois, but right under the law. More as we get it on all of this. Ray McGovern at 11 this morning and Larry, 11 this morning Eastern, and Larry Johnson at 3 this afternoon Eastern. What is the latest? What is the latest with Jack DeShera? Are we really to believe that just because a member of the military had guns in his home, he should be in jail for a crime that he probably didn't even commit. When was the last time a member of the military was kept in jail just because he has guns at home, which the

military encourages its active duty members to possess? Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.