Double standard in Hunter Biden bargain

Would-be US Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis had an understandable political imperative in mind when he described Tuesday’s plea bargain with prosecutors that will likely keep “first son” Hunter Biden out of prison as “a sweetheart deal”. But the Florida Governor wasn’t far off the mark in doing so. Neither were those such as outraged editors at the New York Post, which has led the way since 2020 in looking into alleged corruption involving the Biden family, who said the deal “reeks”. The Post added in an editorial: “As things stand, the only possible conclusion is that the (Department of) Justice is corrupt.”

There should be no surprise about such conclusions and the questions they raise. They are inevitable, given the remarkable leniency of the agreement with Joe Biden’s troubled 53-year-old son after five years of intensive investigation by authorities into his private and business dealings. What prosecutors have come up with is a deal under which he will plead guilty to two relatively minor misdemeanour charges over his “wilful failure” to pay more than $US200,000 in taxes in 2017 and 2018 on income of more than $US3m from foreign business deals. A separate charge over buying a gun at a time when he was a cocaine addict will be dealt with no less leniently. It will be dropped after he promises to stay drug-free for two years and never again own a firearm. Nowhere in the agreed deal is there any mention of claims by Republicans in congress that they have documented dozens of suspicious financial transactions relating to Hunter Biden’s overseas business dealings while his father was vice-president. The evidence is said to include a web of shell companies that appear to have funnelled large sums of cash to Hunter Biden and other Biden family members. Allegations surrounding them have been at the heart of claims about corruption within the family. That is despite The Wall Street Journal noting on Tuesday, after details of the Hunter Biden deal emerged, that “none of The Wall Street Journal’s reporting has found that Joe Biden was involved in his son’s business activities”.

Yet Republicans have a point when they say Hunter Biden’s kid-gloves treatment, in contrast to the way charges against Donald Trump are being dealt with, show the Biden administration is operating a two-tiered system of justice. Biden Sr’s hope will doubtless be that the plea bargain reached with US Attorney David Weiss of Delaware, ironically a Trump appointee, will end the controversy before the President’s campaign for a second term begins in earnest next year. That seems unlikely, nor should it do so. Grave questions of probity and influence-peddling remain and must be answered. They go to the heart of the White House. It is imperative that Mr Weiss makes good on his promise that the investigation into the Biden family is ongoing and this is not the end.