Hunter Biden’s team is once again trying to have the gun charges levied against the first son dropped, this time by claiming Special Counsel David Weiss’s office made a mistake in claiming that a photograph that is obviously of sawdust was actually a picture of powder cocaine. This comes after Mr. Weiss recently disclosed new evidence of the first son’s drug use at the time he purchased a firearm in 2018 and lied about it to a federal agency. 

In a February 14 court filing that asks the presiding judge to reject Mr. Biden’s motion for the felony gun charges against him to be dismissed, Mr. Weiss disclosed that his office and law enforcement have obtained “multiple photographs” of what was apparently crack cocaine as well as powder cocaine.

One of those pictures shows, reflected in a mirror, three lines of some light brown substance — that looks like sawdust — on what appears to be a woodworking bench. Mr. Weiss’s office claimed it was cocaine. 

“The prosecution is flat out wrong — both that Mr. Biden ‘took’ this photograph and in claiming that it depicts ‘cocaine,’” Mr. Biden’s legal team writes in its filing. “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.”

The picture was sent to Mr. Biden by his psychiatrist, Keith Ablow, who had received the photo from another client — a master carpenter — who was also addicted to cocaine and was apparently making a joke to Mr. Ablow by arranging the sawdust into three “lines.” 

“The message accompanying that photo was meant to convey that Mr. Biden, too, could overcome any addiction,” Mr. Biden’s lawyer, Abbe Lowell, writes. 

“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,” Mr. Lowell declares. “Mistaking sawdust for cocaine sounds more like a storyline from one of the 1980s Police Academy comedies than what should be expected in a high-profile prosecution by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

Mr. Lowell has been accusing the prosecution of failing to produce evidence to the defense. In July 2023, a prosecutor in Mr. Weiss’s office, Leo Wise, told the presiding federal judge that they had turned over all evidence to Mr. Lowell. 

“Mr. Biden’s skepticism that the prosecution has produced all that is required is compounded by the prosecution’s refusal to declare that it has met its discovery obligations,” Mr. Lowell writes. “Perhaps the prosecution is gun-shy about now confirming that it has met its discovery obligations because it was so very wrong in making that same claim to the Court seven months ago. Three months after making that July 2023 representation, the prosecution made its first production in October 2023, followed by subsequent productions in November 2023 and January 2024.”

For months, Mr. Lowell has been filing motion after motion to discredit Mr. Weiss — a United States attorney nominated to his position by President Trump before Attorney General Garland elevated him last year to special counsel — as a right-wing hack and tool of the GOP. 

In this latest filing, Mr. Lowell also points to the recent indictment of an FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, for lying to the government about a bribe he claimed had been paid to the president and his son during the Obama administration.

“With prodding from extremist Republican Members of Congress and the right-wing media, the prosecution team that was already pursuing Mr. Biden resuscitated the baseless investigation of Mr. Smirnov’s ridiculous claims against Mr. Biden 34 months later,” Mr. Lowell argues. “Lo and behold, some seven months later, the Special Counsel finally figured out that Mr. Smirnov was lying. … It is more remarkable that beginning in July 2023, the Special Counsel’s team would follow Mr. Smirnov down his rabbit hole of lies as long as it did.”