Donald Trump and now Hunter Biden, the president’s son, have been convicted of ridiculous crimes no ordinary Americans would ever have been charged with.
Far from being ‘above the law’, their recent convictions for victimless behaviour they engaged in many years ago highlight how prosecutors can use and abuse a vast array of arcane legislation to bring down famous individuals to satisfy political demands.
Democrat District Attorneys’ hankering to prosecute Trump is well known. But Hunter too now faces jail time because he’s the president’s son.
The President and the Democrats have reaped what they sowed in the Hunter Biden case, after pursuing Trump so mercilessly through the courts rather than the ballot box.
Reports of the younger Biden’s brief (11 day) gun possession in 2018 emerged years ago, his rampant drug use was emphatically confirmed by the laptop he carelessly left at a computer store in late 2019.
But it was only after a chorus of Republican demands he be prosecuted was he actually indicted last year, perhaps only so the federal justice department could maintain the appearance of a neutral justice system.
It was clear by David Weiss’s appointment as special prosecutor in August that that Biden’s Justice Department had be seen to go hard on his son considering Trump was facing a number of major indictments, state and federal.
Either way, politics was paramount.
As Republican congressman Thomas Massie, usually sensibly at odds with his colleagues, observed on Tuesday (Wednesday AEST) Hunter might deserve to be in jail for something, but not this.
“There are millions of marijuana users who own guns in this country, and none of them should be in jail for purchasing or possessing a firearm against current laws,” he said on social media.
Fellow libertarian-minded and influential Republican Matt Gaetz agreed, tweeting to his 2.5 million followers that the convictions were “kinda dumb”.
Ironically, for all the waste of public resources to bring the prosecutions, the forests of trees felled and endless hours of waffle on cable TV to analyse them, they won’t make much difference politically.
Mr Trump’s 34 felony accounts have done little politically except fuel a record hundred million dollar plus MAGA fundraising haul, which could help get Trump over the line in November.
Meanwhile, Hunter Biden, 54, is an adult who isn’t running for office.
If anything the gun-related convictions could elicit sympathy for the elder Biden, 81, whose public pronouncements indicate he clearly loves his son and probably worries he will relapse.
The First Lady, his stepmother, flew back and forth between France, which she visited with president for D Day celebrations, and the US to sit with Hunter during the case.
Many Americans have a family member or friend who has struggled with drug addiction. About 40 per cent of American households own a gun.
The White House took the unusual step of altering the president’s agenda at the last minute after the verdict so the president could rush back to Wilmington to be with Hunter.
Indeed, it was striking, given his well-known loquacity, that Donald Trump, whose brother died young of alcohol abuse, himself didn’t comment on the verdict in the hours after it emerged, leaving it to a press secretary.
Republicans would have preferred Hunter be found not guilty, so their charges of a ‘two tiered’ justice system would resonate more convincingly.
Indeed, the younger Biden faces another set of tax charges later in the year in California which will make that accusation even harder to make, especially if he’s found guilty again.
Perhaps Trump also realised that many gun-owning Republicans believe the federal restrictions that ensnared Hunter violate the second amendment of the US constitution – indeed that was part of the defence’s legal argument!
The most important outcome of the trial was confirmation about Hunter Biden’s laptop, derided as ‘Russian disinformation’ for years by the mainstream media and initially censored on social media. It was the centrepiece of the prosecution’s case.
Joe Biden has promised not to pardon his son if he’s sentenced to prison. That will be a hard promise to keep if Biden is defeated in November by Donald Trump, who will understandably seek to pardon himself if he returns to the White House in January next year.
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