Hunter Biden’s lawyers accused the Justice Department on Tuesday of confusing “lines of sawdust” with cocaine residue in a photo shown in a February 13 court filing.
According to the DOJ court filing, the image in question was among several photographs Hunter Biden allegedly took of his drug abuse.
The DOJ included the photo in the court record to show that the president’s son was addicted to drugs when he answered “No” in 2018 to whether he used narcotics on an application to buy a firearm, which is a violation of federal law.
But Hunter Biden’s lawyers claim that “reckless” DOJ prosecutors confused “sawdust” with cocaine, maintaining that the substance that appears in the photograph is harmless.
“The prosecution’s latest filing amplifies why Mr. Biden and the Court cannot take the prosecution’s assertions … at face value,” attorneys Abbe Lowell and Bartholomew Dalton wrote in a statement filed in federal court in Delaware.
Attorneys for Hunter Biden v. DOJ. by emmanuel.rondon on Scribd
“Multiple sources have pointed out, and a review of discovery confirms, this is actually a photo of sawdust from an expert carpenter and it was sent to Mr. Biden, not vice versa,” they said.
Hunter’s attorneys explained that Hunter’s then-psychiatrist, Dr. Keith Ablow, took the photo to show his patient “lines of sawdust sent to me by a master carpenter who was a coke addict.”
The idea, according to the president’s son’s legal team, was to “convey that Mr. Biden, too, could overcome any addiction.”
“The prosecution was reckless in making such a hyperbolic and sensational claim in a public filing, which it surely realized would prejudice Mr. Biden in the public eye,” Lowell and Dalton wrote.
However, the photograph mentioned by Hunter Biden’s legal team was only one of four included in special counsel David Weiss’ previous filing showing cocaine and drug paraphernalia.
Hunter’s lawyers made no mention of the other photographs in their presentation on Tuesday, where they also accused Weiss of failing to provide their client with “all the information that he is due so that he can prepare for and receive a fair trial.”
