Hunter Biden can and will only blame himself for his conviction for lying about drug addiction on a form to purchase a gun and then possessing the gun after lying to buy it. He is the one who abused crack cocaine, and he is the one who chose to purchase a gun.

But we have Attorney General Merrick Garland to thank for the fact the case was brought, and that it was tried in the politically explosive time of a presidential campaign, only a month before the start of the Republican convention and two months before the Democratic one.

Hunter Biden has been found guilty on all three charges in his federal gun trial, becoming the first son of a sitting US president to be criminally convicted.

Prosecutors said Biden, 54, lied about his drug use on a federal form when he bought a handgun in 2018.

Biden pleaded not guilty, claiming he was in recovery from drug addiction at the time and therefore did not lie on the gun application form.

A panel of 12 Delaware jurors reached their verdict after about three hours of deliberations.

The most important moment in Hunter Biden’s criminal trial came not when the verdict found him guilty on three counts of lying on a federal firearms application, but in the previous week, when President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice admitted in court and under oath that the laptop linking Hunter Biden to payments from foreign governments was real.

Hunter Biden is standing trial this week on federal charges of illegally possessing a firearm after allegedly lying about his status as a drug user when buying a pistol in 2018.

President Joe Biden's son has previously pleaded not guilty to the charges, saying that he entered a rehab program before purchasing the firearm and checked off "no" on a federal form that asked whether he was an "unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance."

Dozens of former intelligence officials who signed a letter warning Hunter Biden's infamous laptop "has all the classic earmarks" of Russian disinformation are either declining to retract or doubling down despite the device being entered as evidence in his ongoing criminal trial.

Let me take you back nearly four years − to late October 2020. Then-President Donald Trump and candidate Joe Biden duked it out in their second and final presidential debate before the election.

Trump made references to the recently published New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s now-infamous laptop.  

“They’re calling it the laptop from hell,” Trump said.

How right he was. The laptop just made an official appearance in federal court this week. More on that shortly.

Journalists are taught to be skeptical of sources with transparent ulterior motives.

That lesson was forgotten by the mainstream media when the New York Post reported on incriminating emails allegedly found on Hunter Biden’s laptop hard drive that could have subverted Joe Biden’s 2020 presidential aspirations. The emails reportedly showed corruption in the Biden family.

Hunter Biden’s scandalous laptop, which was originally dismissed as Russian disinformation by many media outlets, pundits and even liberal allies in the intelligence community, was formally entered into evidence and confirmed by the FBI this week in his ongoing federal gun crime trial. 

James Clapper, who served as director of national intelligence under President Obama, recently stood by his decision to sign on to a 2020 letter with 50 other former officials warning Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation.

Asked by Fox News if he regretted signing the letter, which claimed the laptop had “all the earmarks” of Russian interference, Clapper said, “No.” This despite the laptop, which was abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, now being used by prosecutors in Hunter’s federal gun trial.

You'd have to be some sort of hick from the sticks to take a Hunter Biden criminal conviction into account in deciding on your 2024 presidential vote.

That was Molly Jong-Fast's gist on today's Way Too Early, the Morning Joe pregame show. When host Jonathan Lemire asked the MSNBC political analyst whether there could be a negative political impact for Joe Biden stemming from a Hunter conviction, she suggested only hayseeds who can't make fine moral distinctions could be misled: