International
‘Really Astonishing’: Jonathan Turley Says ‘All Of’ Hunter Biden’s Trial ‘Defenses’ Quickly ‘Collapsed’
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By JASON COHEN
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said Thursday he was shocked by how quickly Hunter Biden’s various defenses in his gun trial have “collapsed.”
Biden’s trial began Monday and he is confronting three federal gun charges brought by Special Counsel David Weiss in September, which include providing false statements and knowingly possessing a gun while being addicted to drugs. Turley asserted on “America’s Newsroom” that the prosecution effectively countered Biden attorney Abbe Lowell’s argument that his client’s laptop, which is a key piece of evidence in the trial, is not fully authentic as well as the argument that Biden was not using drugs when he signed paperwork to purchase a gun.
“The prosecution is doing an amazingly good job in my view,” Turley said. “This is a very disciplined case. What’s really astonishing is how fast all of the defenses put forward by Abbe Lowell collapsed within 48 hours. There was a long argument that the laptop was tampered with. They put on an agent saying there’s no tampering here. This is real and authentic. They said that Hunter Biden wasn’t doing drugs when he signed that. They have a text of him the next day trying to score drugs from a guy named Mookie, and a day after that, doing drugs on the hood of a car, according to a text.”
Corporate media, Big Tech, former intelligence officials and then-candidate Joe Biden cast doubt on the laptop’s authenticity in October of 2020, but now prosecutors are using it as important evidence during the trial.
“And all these other witnesses saying ‘of course he was an addict, he was doing crack every 20 minutes when I knew him.’ They then said well, ‘maybe someone else filled out the form.’ You had Mr. Cleveland say ‘I watched him fill out the form. I told him to take his time.’ So every one of these defenses collapsed shortly after they were stated by the defense. And that leads to this question of why, why isn’t he just pleading guilty? This is an open and shut case,” Turley added.
“It’s obvious he was doing drugs and that he had signed the form falsely,” he continued. “That might keep him out of jail. It certainly would have avoided an embarrassing trial. The answer is, this is Biden town. This is a Biden who is standing trial in his hometown and this is the opposite of Manhattan. Here the jury pool could not be better for the defendant. I think the defense is using a nullification strategy.”
Prosecutors obtained messages and material from Biden’s abandoned laptop, which is now considered real despite the previous assertions before the 2020 election, showing it to the jury as evidence of the defendant’s drug use around the period of purchasing the gun in 2018, according to CNN. Criminal defense attorney Bernarda Villalona suggested Biden plead guilty on Monday, asserting Weiss’ evidence against him is “strong” and that it may be his “best” course of action to evade incarceration.
Business
How convenient: Minnesota day care reports break-in, records gone
A Minneapolis day care run by Somali immigrants is claiming that a mysterious break-in wiped out its most sensitive records, even as police say officers were never told that anything was actually stolen — a discrepancy that’s drawing sharp attention amid Minnesota’s spiraling child care fraud scandal.
According to the center’s manager, Nasrulah Mohamed, someone forced their way into Nakomis Day Care Center earlier this week by entering through a rear kitchen area, damaging a wall and accessing the office. Mohamed told reporters the intruder made off with “important documentation,” including children’s enrollment records, employee files, and checkbooks tied to the facility’s operations.
But a preliminary report from the Minneapolis Police Department tells a different story. Police say no loss was reported to officers at the time of the call. While the department confirmed the center later contacted police with additional information, an updated report was not immediately available.
Video released by the day care purporting to show damage from the incident depicts a hole punched through drywall inside what appears to be a utility closet, with stacks of cinder blocks visible just behind the wall — imagery that has only fueled skepticism as investigators continue to unravel what authorities have described as one of the largest fraud schemes ever tied to Minnesota’s human services programs.
Mohamed blamed the alleged break-in on fallout from a viral investigation by YouTuber Nick Shirley, who recently toured nearly a dozen Minnesota day care sites while questioning whether they were legitimately operating. Shirley’s video has racked up more than 110 million views. Mohamed insisted the coverage unfairly targeted Somali operators and said his center has since received what he described as hateful and threatening messages.
A manager at the Nokomis Daycare Center in Minneapolis detailed "extensive vandalism" at the facility during a Wednesday news conference.
Manager Nasrulah Mohamed reported that the suspect stole important employee and client documents, an incident he attributed to YouTuber Nick… pic.twitter.com/71nNTSXdTT
— FOX 9 (@FOX9) December 31, 2025
“This is devastating news, and we don’t know why this is targeting our Somali community,” Mohamed said, calling Shirley’s reporting false. Nakomis Day Care Center was not among the facilities featured in the video.
The break-in claim surfaced as law enforcement and federal officials continue to expose a massive fraud network centered in Minneapolis, involving food assistance, housing, and child care payments. Authorities say at least $1 billion has already been identified as fraudulent, with federal prosecutors warning the total could climb as high as $9 billion. Ninety-two people have been charged so far, 80 of them Somali immigrants.
Late Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced it was freezing all federal child care payments to Minnesota unless the state can prove the funds are being used lawfully. The payments totaled roughly $185 million in 2025 alone.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, under intensifying scrutiny for allowing fraud to metastasize for years, responded by attacking the Trump administration rather than addressing the substance of the findings. “This is Trump’s long game,” Walz wrote on X Tuesday night, claiming the administration was politicizing fraud enforcement to defund programs — despite federal officials pointing to documented abuse and ongoing criminal cases.
Meanwhile, questions continue to swirl around facilities already flagged by investigators. Reporters visiting several sites highlighted in Shirley’s video found at least one — Quality “Learing” Center — operating with children inside despite state officials previously saying it had been shut down. The Minnesota Department of Children, Youth, and Families later issued a confusing clarification, saying the center initially reported it would close but later claimed it would remain open.
As Minnesota scrambles to respond to the funding freeze and mounting arrests, the conflicting accounts surrounding the Nakomis Day Care incident underscore a broader problem confronting state leaders: a system so riddled with gaps and contradictions that even basic facts — like whether records were actually stolen — are now in dispute, while taxpayers are left holding the bill.
International
Trump confirms first American land strike against Venezuelan narco networks
President Trump confirmed Friday that U.S. forces have carried out what he described as the first American land strike on a Venezuelan smuggling facility, marking a significant escalation in his administration’s campaign against narco-terror networks tied to the regime of Nicolás Maduro.
The disclosure came unexpectedly during a live radio broadcast on New York’s WABC Radio, when billionaire businessman and guest host John Catsimatidis told listeners his phone was ringing mid-segment — and that the caller was the president. Catsimatidis, who was filling in on Sid and Friends in the Morning, said he had been exchanging text messages with Trump the night before about U.S. military action against Islamic State targets in northern Nigeria. Trump, he said, decided to call in unannounced to discuss a range of global security issues, including maritime drug interdictions in the Caribbean and Pacific.
During that conversation, Trump revealed that U.S. forces had already struck a key Venezuelan smuggling hub on land. “I don’t know if you read it or saw it — they have a big plant or a big facility where the ships come from,” Trump said on air. “Two nights ago we knocked that out. So we hit them very hard.”
The president did not identify the location of the facility or detail how the operation was carried out. Still, the comment appeared to confirm what Trump had been signaling publicly for weeks — that his crackdown on Venezuelan narco-terror operations would soon move beyond sea interdictions. Trump ordered U.S. forces to begin targeting drug-running boats in September and has repeatedly warned that land-based operations were coming.
In a Thanksgiving Day call with U.S. military personnel, Trump said efforts to stop Venezuelan traffickers “by land” would begin “very soon,” adding that “the land is easier.” He reiterated that message on December 11, telling reporters at the White House that land operations were imminent. If the timeline Trump laid out Friday is accurate, the strike took place less than two weeks after those remarks.
The left-leaning New York Times later reported that unnamed officials had confirmed the strike occurred but declined to provide specifics. According to the paper, U.S. officials would not disclose where the site was located, how it was targeted, or what precise role it played in drug trafficking, and there has been no public acknowledgment from Maduro’s government or other regional authorities.
Even with those details still under wraps, Trump’s remarks represent the clearest confirmation yet that U.S. military action against Venezuelan smuggling networks has expanded onto sovereign territory — a move that underscores how far his administration is willing to go to dismantle drug pipelines tied to hostile regimes in the Western Hemisphere.
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