Maybe because it’s an election year, nothing happens now without being seen as part of the larger political narrative. And when Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict came down on Tuesday morning, it was about so much more than whether or not Hunter actually is guilty. (Oh, he is.) We knew before it ever came down how a guilty verdict would be spun by Democrats and the media (I repeat myself):

“The justice system WORKED!” the left would cry. “A Biden was convicted in Wilmington, Delaware! Republicans are wrong to whine about partisan courtrooms. We learn from this conviction that Trump’s conviction is valid.”

Judge Jeanine Pirro has no patience with those who say this conviction means Hunter was treated neutrally by the “justice” system:

It was the Biden White House, the Biden Department of Justice, that had this case from 2018, allowed the statute of limitations to run, so Hunter Biden could not be accountable for the worst…tax crimes that were connected to when his father was the Vice President. And when he was getting money from all over the world, and then it was funneled to everybody who was sitting in the front seat of that courtroom. You wonder why they’re so unified? ‘Cause that’s where the cash came in.

Of course, the reason why they had this trial in the first place is that a sharp-eyed judge, Maryellen Noreika, noticed some highly unusual terms in Hunter’s original sweetheart plea deal that would have let him off for virtually anything else that emerged in evidence from this case, including the financial impropriety. Think a more partisan judge — say, Judge Merchan — wouldn’t have let that slide right through?

An Illusion of Equal Justice

Matt Margolis at PJ Media says he didn’t expect the jury to find Hunter guilty. (His piece is VIP-only, but we’ll summarize and comment.) “There’s no doubt that many on the left will claim that the verdict disproves Republican claims that there’s a two-tiered justice system,” he said, “but I assure you it does not.”

He quotes Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde from a post on X: “Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict is nothing more than the Left’s attempt to create the illusion of equal justice. Don’t fall for it.”

The two cases could not have been more different. The evidence in the Hunter case was so strong that many were calling it “open and shut.” Out of desperation, surely, defense attorney Abbe Lowell tried everything he could think of, reaching a point at which this jury must’ve thought he was insulting their intelligence.

And these “gun” charges were just a drop in the huge slop-bucket of Hunter’s improprieties. The nonprofit group Marco Polo has been through the laptop — which the “Justice” Department now admits is real and has not been tampered with — and finds evidence of 170 other crimes that Hunter hasn’t been charged with.

The Trump case, in contrast, didn’t even have a real crime. The law had to be so contorted to charge Trump with a felony, Margolis says, that “even left-wing experts were predicting an acquittal.” The key witness, Michael Cohen, was a convicted liar and about the worst witness any prosecution could ever put on the stand.

In case you do have a VIP subscription to PJ Media, here’s that full column, though I think we’ve given you the gist…

As Emma-Jo Morris at Breitbart writes, “Hunter Biden receiving a felony conviction on three gun charges in Delaware allows the Left to proclaim ‘No one is above the law,’ while distracting from the much more serious allegations against the first son — and his father.”

Their strategy, she says, is to lump all of Hunter’s legal transgressions into this one case and say, “See? Justice is blind!” And never mind the overtly political nature of Trump’s trial and conviction.

She quotes Andrew Weissmann and other MSNBC pundits gushing about the rule of law, so read this piece only if you have some Pepto handy.

A First Step Toward Accountability

Breitbart also quotes Trump campaign national press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying that Hunter Biden’s guilty verdict is a “distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family…Crooked Joe Biden’s reign over the Biden Family Criminal Empire is all coming to an end on November 5th, and never again will a Biden sell government access for personal profit.”

Leavitt is right about us needing an election to put an end to this.

But New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, who chairs the House Republican Conference, sees Hunter’s conviction as the “first step” towards accountability for the Biden family. She reminded reporters of the corrupt DOJ’s original sweetheart deal offered to Hunter. While Democrats talk as though this verdict wraps things up, she says, “We must, and we will continue as House Republicans to investigate the Biden crime family for the corrupt influence peddling schemes that generated over $18 million in foreign payments to the Biden crime family members.”

Defending the Indefensible

Attorney General Merrick Garland is tired of criticism of the DOJ, and The Washington Post helpfully published his op-ed entitled, “Unfounded Attacks on the Justice Department Must End.” Recall that he was grilled last week by the House Judiciary Committee and it was not a good look for him. You can’t read it without a subscription, and we know you wouldn’t want a subscription to The Washington Post, so Lincoln Brown at PJ Media sums it up well.

Garland lists various ways the DOJ is under attack, such as calls to defund (horrors!), “conspiracy theories,” “dangerous falsehoods,” and “bullying and intimidation” of career public servants. “The Justice Department makes decisions about criminal investigations based only on the facts and the law,” he writes. I’m sorry if you were drinking coffee while reading that sentence and spewed it all over your screen. Set down your coffee and check out the whole piece; it’s a must-read.

Does making prosecutorial decisions based only on the facts and the law result in railroading frail elderly grandmothers into prison for allegedly blocking access to an abortion clinic, but doing nothing about radical leftists who attack pro-life pregnancy centers or block Jewish students’ access to college classes? Is that also why they send Trump supporters to prison for years for stepping through an open door at the Capitol on January 6th, taking a selfie and leaving, but when pro-Hamas protesters surrounded the White House, shut down streets and scuffled with police, they were just exercising their First Amendment rights and there were no arrests?

Garland’s threatening tone didn’t go over well with Mollie Hemingway.

Final Thoughts

Kentucky Rep. James Comer, who chairs the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, said Hunter’s guilty verdict was a “step towards accountability” but that the DOJ needed to press on and investigate the Bidens’ influence peddling. Of course, Garland won’t do anything; Rep. Stefanik was right to say it’s going to take an election for anything to happen on this.

Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA called this “a fake trial … kabuki theater.” Shortly before the verdict came down, he said, “The charges against Trump were invented from scratch to take out a political enemy. They have always been a sham. The charges against Hunter, meanwhile, are a bare minimum, the end result of years of favorable treatment from the DOJ, FBI and IRS to protect the Biden family from any accountability.”

In case you missed initial reports of the guilty verdict, here’s one from the Daily Caller.

One group that found itself in the middle of this firestorm deserves high praise: the jurors. One juror interviewed after the verdict said that during their three hours of deliberations, they really just looked at the evidence and set the “Biden” issue aside. “We didn’t use Jill. We didn’t use President Biden”…It was “very sad” that Hunter’s life had “turned out the way it did” and I do “not think Hunter belongs in jail.”

We shall see. Most legal pundits we’ve heard from have thought Hunter would see no jail time. Judge Noreika didn’t immediately set a date for his sentencing. According to Breitbart, she recently did give a one-year sentence to a defendant in a similar case. Since Hunter receives Secret Service protection, that could be a factor in her decision. Other options include probation and home detention.

Rusty Weiss at RedState had an interesting thought: Trump should promise to pardon Hunter if he wins in November. Seems wrongheaded to us, though, as we hate to see more politics being played with this. But he makes his case here; see what you think.

Finally, you’ve probably seen that mere hours after the verdict, which reportedly was unexpected by Joe Biden and hit him hard, the President read a speech off his teleprompter pushing for more gun control laws. The irony was surely not lost on anyone.

RELATED READING: Showing how the tide may be turning politically for Joe Biden, Politico ran a piece about the role Biden’s White House aides apparently have played in his “family business.” Members of his inner circle were “regularly enmeshed” in these dealings, they report. “Many of the President’s closest staffers and advisors have doubled as his relatives’ business associates, both during and after their stints working for the man at the center of the Biden family orbit.” This must-read piece reinforces the fact that Hunter’s little gun case is just the tip of an enormous iceberg.

 

Mike Huckabee is a former governor of Arkansas and longtime conservative commentator on issues in culture and current events. A New York Times bestselling author, he hosts the weekly talk show Huckabee on TBN.

Originally published at MikeHuckabee.com. Reprinted with permission.