Nobody who has a soul wants to see a member of their family found guilty of a crime and imprisoned. Therefore, it is beyond a doubt that President Joe Biden is not pleading with prosecutors to convict his son, Hunter Biden, of the tax and gun purchase charges for which anonymous federal agents claim he should be held accountable.
However, even if the evidence against Hunter isn’t as strong as the anonymous agents claim to the Washington Post, the president should still take a moment to celebrate the political benefit he stands to gain as a result of Hunter Biden’s legal misfortune after shaking off the normal parental melancholy. An indictment and conviction of Hunter Biden would show the Justice Department’s integrity, which President Donald Trump, the department’s former leader, politicised and is still attacking.
Let’s take a moment to recognise Hunter Biden’s innocence until proven guilty before sending the president a congratulations bouquet. We should also point out that it is utterly unfair for criminal justice personnel to speculate about a suspect’s guilt in an anonymous manner to reporters. It’s bad enough when prosecutors suggest someone should be charged to media, but in this case, it was agents who offered their judgement in an anonymous manner. The agents are not in charge of deciding who should be charged. It is their responsibility to compile evidence so that prosecutors can decide whether or not to file charges. The leak has Biden’s counsel rightfully up in arms, demanding that the leaker or leakers be found and brought to justice while correctly stating that it is a crime for an agent to divulge grand jury information. Given that the Wall Street Journal has now reported, independently of the Washington Post, that investigators believe Hunter Biden should be prosecuted even if prosecutors haven’t made a final judgement, Biden’s counsel will probably expand his grievance.
We can now safely assess the benefits for the president of the possibility that the younger Biden will face legal consequences since the tale has already broken through from the prosecutorial cone of silence. Trump and many of his supporters hold the belief that the system is “rigged” in the Democrats’ favour and that they influence everything from elections to criminal investigations for political benefit. This whining was made clear by Trump’s repeated accusations of the “deep state” undermining his presidency by improperly employing legislative and criminal probes, which resulted in two impeachments. You may also remember Trump’s vehement allegations that he levelled against his rival Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign. For handling classified information in personal emails, Trump demanded that the prosecution “lock her up” and blasted the lack of action as an example of skewed justice.
Oh, and there’s also Trump’s constant lecturing about a “stolen election,” which he claims the Biden Justice Department has neglected for political reasons despite his lack of supporting evidence. Recently, he has asserted — once more without providing any proof — that FBI agents buried secret documents at Mar-a-Lago.
Republicans tried to make Hunter Biden’s run for president in 2020 a point of contention by alleging that he engaged in dishonest business activities that brought his father to his door. In order to publicly reveal that Hunter Biden was under investigation, Trump went so far as to rely on the support of the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during that impeachment-imminent phone call in 2019.
If charges are brought on Hunter Biden, they will demonstrate to even the most cynical people that the justice system is not broken and that lawbreakers will receive justice regardless of whether their father lives in the White House or a tar-paper shack. The Hunter Biden inquiry appears to have been properly separated from by the Biden administration, despite Republican demands that Attorney General Merrick Garland resign and name a special prosecutor to handle the subject. To prevent any perception of administration involvement, Garland has vowed that there will be no political meddling in the case. Currently, the case is being handled by a US attorney that Trump nominated in 2017.
There is one more good news for Democrats in this episode. Garland will have already shown that his dedication to the rule of law exceeds partisan loyalty if the Justice Department indicts Hunter Biden and then takes action to prosecute Trump – either for stealing federal data or attempting to rig the 2020 election. Swing voters would likely be swayed, though ardent Trump supporters would undoubtedly remain unconvinced.
Hunter Biden’s prosecution most certainly isn’t the October surprise in his party’s favour the president had hoped for. According to the Post and Journal articles, his son might receive a prison sentence following a contentious trial or after pleading guilty. Even sceptics and doubters should be convinced once again that justice isn’t a total hoax by the fact that the wheels of justice seem to be rolling on the president’s son’s case, unhindered. Joe Biden’s good news will probably be Hunter Biden’s terrible news as we speed toward the November elections.