"It depends on what the meaning of the word 'is' is."

Bill Clinton famously explained, defending himself for having said under oath that "there's nothing going on between" him and Monica Lewinsky. He continued: "if 'is' means is and never has been, that is not—that is one thing. If it means there is none, that was a completely true statement."

I'm reminded of the ballsy precision of Clinton's defense as I read the NYT live reporting from Day 1 of the Hunter Biden trial:

[Abbe] Lowell, Hunter Biden's lawyer... implies that the present tense of the question about drug use on the form to buy a gun — the verb “is” — means the government must prove Biden was getting high at the exact time he bought the gun.

It's called the Rule of Lenity.

Let me quote a SCOTUSblog piece from 2016, "The Court after Scalia: The Rule of Lenity":

One of Justice Antonin Scalia’s many contributions to Supreme Court jurisprudence was to revitalize the rule of lenity – the ancient maxim that ambiguous penal statutes should be construed narrowly in the defendant’s favor....

Courts often associate the rule with due process principles of fair notice, the idea being that defendants should not be held to account for violating prohibitions they could not anticipate....

In my view, the rule of lenity is justified and important because it advances crucial structural values in criminal lawmaking and enforcement.... [Lenity] ensures... that “politicians must lay bare the full extent of the conduct they intend to criminalize, exposing themselves to whatever resistance or ridicule their choices entail; they cannot use vague or general language to obscure the law’s reach.”...

AND: Yes, of course, this is relevant to Donald Trump's "hush money" case. Here's Ian Millhiser, back on April 4th, "The dubious legal theory at the heart of the Trump indictment, explained/No one knows if Donald Trump can be prosecuted for the hush money payment to Stormy Daniels" (Vox):

The Supreme Court has long held, under a doctrine known as the “rule of lenity,” that “fair warning should be given to the world, in language that the common world will understand, of what the law intends to do if a certain line is passed.” Thus, when the meaning of a criminal statute is unclear, the Constitution sometimes requires that statute to be read narrowly because an unclear criminal law did not give potential defendants “fair warning” that their conduct was illegal....

[The Supreme Court] could easily invoke the rule of lenity to justify asserting the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction over the case.... Many justices have argued that this rule of lenity is implicit in the Constitution’s guarantee that no one shall be denied liberty without “due process” of law. So Trump could ask the Supreme Court to rule that this prosecution is unconstitutional....

The current Court is divided on how broadly to apply this rule of lenity, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Neil Gorsuch arguing for a more expansive approach, while Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh push a more pro-prosecution approach....