Now that we've had a bit of time to digest the guilty verdicts delivered against Hunter Biden in his Delaware gun charges case, we are watching how this news is being spun by analysts on both sides of the aisle. I will be the first to confess that I was taken by surprise, writing on Twitter that I would be forced to eat my hat for lunch last week after predicting that he could never be convicted in Delaware. Most of the left-leaning media appear to have thrown Hunter under the bus pretty quickly, seizing on the result as somehow being proof that conservative claims about a two-tiered system of justice under the Biden administration have been shown to be invalid. They were also quick to offer the convictions as evidence that "no one is above the law" and Donald Trump should quit complaining.
A prime example is found at Politico this week under the title, "Hunter Biden verdict throws ‘sand in the gears’ of GOP’s attacks on legal system."
Republicans are scrambling to prevent Hunter Biden’s conviction on felony gun charges from undermining their argument that the judicial system is being weaponized against Donald Trump.
They just can’t agree on how.
Trump’s campaign cast the conviction of his rival’s son on Tuesday as a “distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family,” while some hard-line supporters dismissed the proceedings as “fake.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson argued that Hunter Biden’s conviction “doesn’t” undercut Republicans’ claims of a two-tiered justice system because the evidence against him was “overwhelming.”
All of these arguments (from both sides, honestly) are fairly easy to pick apart. The reason for this is that the cases have so very little in common. They're really as different as night and day. When we attempt to equate one to the other in an effort to gain a bit of political advantage, the wheels come off of the argument rather quickly. First, here is how the left is generally framing the situation. Donald Trump was convicted of all 34 counts against him in Manhattan and claims that the system was rigged. But now Hunter Biden was convicted on all three counts even more quickly. Ergo, the system can't be rigged.
As the Speaker correctly pointed out, the situation in Delaware was beyond stark. It's true that I expressed my own concerns about potential jury nullification, but the prosecution brought forward what was essentially a bulletproof case. They clearly spelled out the specific crimes that Hunter was charged with and the elements required to prove those crimes. They supplied credible witnesses involved in the purchase of the gun, including the person who watched Hunter fill it out and sign it. They brought forward people from Hunter's inner circle who offered damning testimony and played back Hunter's own words reading from the book he wrote specifically confessing to what he was accused of. They had a qualified judge (no matter who nominated her) who delivered crystal-clear jury instructions. The jury simply had no other choice.
Trump's case was almost entirely the opposite in every regard. The actual crimes he was supposedly being accused of were never revealed until the trial was over and even then they were vague. The supposed "crimes" couldn't even be identified. The judge and the prosecutor were obviously biased and muddied the waters at every turn. The jury was given every opportunity to acquit or at least fail to reach a resolution, yet they still managed to do it. The clear result in Hunter's case does absolutely nothing to wipe away the many stains and episodes of reversible error that plagued the Trump case.
If there is any "sand" being thrown in the gears here, it's falling on the gears of the Justice Department. Remember that David Weiss moved heaven and earth to try to keep Hunter from having to stand trial, including crafting the corrupt sweetheart plea bargain deal that the judge wisely rejected. In the end, Weiss and the prosecution probably concluded that Hunter Biden would simply have to become collateral damage as long as the result didn't establish a paper trail leading back to The Big Guy. And for all I know, Joe Biden signed off on the plan to save his own neck. (Or at least try to, anyway.)
