Hunter Biden’s conviction in Delaware over a minor charge is significant mainly because it blows to smithereens the arguments Republicans have made on behalf of Donald Trump. There’s the small claim that Trump didn’t receive a fair trial, that blue-state juries can’t render impartial verdicts on famous political figures. Analysts predicted a jury in Delaware, a tiny state where everybody seems to personally know and adore the Biden family, would go easy on his son. But this failed to transpire.
Most important is the idea that Joe Biden is personally “weaponizing” the justice system to target Trump. House Republicans devoted a hearing last week to pressing their unsubstantiated claim that Biden had orchestrated Alvin Bragg’s moves, as “evidenced” by Bragg’s hiring of an attorney with DOJ experience, a move they seem to believe is unusual.
It is not just the Trumpiest conservatives who believe this. Mainstream conservative pundits routinely assert that “the Democrats” — not just one Democratic prosecutor — decided to lock up Trump. Four-fifths of Republican voters, according to a recent poll, believe the decisions to prosecute Trump in New York came “from the Biden administration,” not from “prosecutors in New York.”
To hold this theory together — which, again, is the belief held by a supermajority of Republicans, not just the Glenn Beck audience — you have to believe Biden is directing the activities of local prosecutors while exerting no control at all over the Justice Department of the branch of government he presides over.
Hunter Biden was convicted of lying on a form he submitted to purchase a firearm, which his wife quickly found and threw away without its ever being used. Elie Honig has argued that these charges, while legally valid, are the sort of case prosecutors would normally ignore.
Where are the legions of conservatives hysterically warning about rogue prosecutions? I believe balance dictates that we are due for several thousand incantations of Lavrentiy Beria’s infamous quote “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”
Sadly, conservative media, which had previously treated Hunter Biden’s addiction-fueled problems as America’s most pressing issue, have found his case less compelling even as its legal phase reached its climax.
“Where’s Hunter?” they taunted for months. Well, here he is, being held to the strictest legal standard by his father’s supposedly rigged Justice Department. And here is his father, mustering all the dignity he can to respect the verdict and even promise not to pardon his son.
It could not be more obvious that one candidate in this race genuinely believes in upholding the rule of law, while the other is a criminal who wishes to regain control of the government to run it like a mafia state.
Jonathan Chait
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