Hunter Biden's conviction destroys key MAGA conspiracy theory
Nevertheless, they're persisting.
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Yesterday, Hunter Biden, son of the president, was convicted on three charges of lying about narcotics use on a gun-purchase form.
In a sane world, this would not be great news for former president and presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump, who has been arguing for a year that President Joe Biden has subverted and weaponized the Justice Department. Are we to believe that Biden weaponized the the DOJ to prosecute his own son?
Apparently we are. Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt popped up gamely on Newsmax to insist that the Hunter conviction is just a "distraction from the real crimes of the corrupt Biden family crime family." (RNC co-chair Lara Trump used the same talking point on Hannity as this newsletter was being finalized.) Trump advisor and right-hand ghoul Stephen Miller similarly tried to keep the conspiracies spinning; he insisted that the DOJ should have prosecuted Hunter not on gun charges, but for more serious crimes.
The hapless James Comer also got in on the act, tweeting that Hunter’s conviction is somehow evidence that the DOJ "continue[s] to cover for the Big Guy, Joe Biden.”
Of course, if Hunter had been exonerated, Comer and company would be insisting the verdict was rigged. You can’t shame conspiracy theorists. But for anyone who’s not inside the MAGA bubble, the verdict shows pretty clearly that Biden is doing anything but weaponizing the rule of law — even if the law in this case is neither thoughtful nor just.
The GOP hoped for grand conspiracies and all they got was this lousy conviction
Meanwhile, Donald Trump has been convicted in New York on 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels. Trump is slated to be sentenced next month. He’s also facing a slew of other charges related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified material after he left the White House.
Republicans have worked themselves into a rabid lather in defense of Trump’s rampant criminality. Shortly after Republicans took control of the House last year, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan created a Subcommittee on the Weaponization of Government specifically to push false claims that Biden’s DOJ is engaged in political prosecutions of conservative figures, especially Trump.
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Trump recently made the ludicrous claim that the DOJ is trying to kill him. Ultra MAGA Rep. Matt Gaetz floated another conspiracy theory in a hearing this month, charging Attorney General Merrick Garland with “dispatching” a former senior official at DOJ to work in the Manhattan district attorney’s office and push through a Trump conviction. This claim is, of course, baseless.
In this climate, a Hunter Biden exoneration would be red meat. The right was already gearing up to spew gleeful conspiracy theories and blame the president if Hunter was not convicted. Just last week, Fox News host Jesse Watters pushed a racist conspiracy theory in which he claimed the trial had been stacked with Black jurors who would refuse to vote to convict.
With Hunter’s conviction, though, MAGA is facing the sad demise of their conspiratorial hopes. Gaetz, for instance, tweeted, “The Hunter Biden gun conviction is kinda dumb tbh.” But if Hunter had beaten the charges, you can bet everyone from Gaetz to Miller to Trump to Jordan to rabid MAGA twitter blue checks would all be on the same message. And it wouldn’t be that the charges are underwhelming.
Who’s weaponizing justice?
As Lisa Needham explained last year in this newsletter, the right has been obsessed for years with prosecuting and smearing Hunter Biden. He’s an appealing target because he’s Joe Biden’s son and his addiction to crack cocaine upended his life and the lives of his family members for years.
In his autobiography, Hunter describes weeks of lost time as he partied with strippers and crooked hangers on, drifting sleepless from one hotel to another, and made various catastrophic decisions — most notably by committing adultery with his brother’s widow.
The right sees Hunter as a means to target his father, primarily via the younger Biden’s involvement with the Ukrainian energy company Burisma. Burisma almost certainly put Hunter on its board because of his name and family connections; they paid him as much as $50,000 a month though he had no relevant experience. There was, though, never any evidence that Joe Biden was involved in getting Hunter the gig, or that Hunter influenced his father’s political decisions in any way.
Nonetheless, then-President Trump saw Burisma as a way to smear then-potential Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden in 2019. In a now infamous phone call, Trump threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine unless Ukrainian President Zelenskyy agreed to investigate the Bidens. The blackmail attempt led to Trump’s first impeachment.
House Republicans continued to investigate Burisma and Hunter into Biden’s presidency, but never found any evidence of wrongdoing. However, right-wing pressure helped push the Justice Department to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hunter.
Again, the special prosecutor did not find any evidence that Joe Biden was involved in any wrongdoing. But he charged Hunter with tax evasion in California, and with lying about his addiction and drug use to purchase a gun. He was just convicted on the gun charges; he still faces trial for tax evasion.
Notable: Democrats aren’t attacking the justice system on Hunter’s behalf
Democrats, for their part, aren’t following Trumpers’ lead by claiming Hunter’s trial was rigged.
Joe Biden has said he will not pardon his son — in striking contrast to Trump, who has promised to pardon those convicted of participating in the violent January 6 coup attempt. Democratic officials mostly haven’t commented on the case, while progressive pundits have broadly been supportive of the process.
"Today is a good reminder that one side of the partisan divide remains committed to the rule of law, even when it’s painful and may not seem fair, and the other doesn’t,” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo tweeted.
Marshall argued that the case wasn’t fair because it wouldn’t have been brought “if not for a prosecutor who has something to prove.” In addition, Hunter’s prosecution underlines underlines the extent to which our drug laws remain punitive and cruel.
In theory, most people understand that addiction is a mental illness, and that addicts like Hunter Biden have little control over their use of controlled substances. Asking an addict to promise on a form not to use drugs is little more than entrapment. Even if someone in good faith signs a form and plans not to use, all the good will in the world isn’t going to allow them to keep that promise.
Further, Biden by all accounts has turned his life around over the last four years. For that reason, former federal prosecutor Ankush Khardori wrote last week that “if I had been asked to prosecute a case against a former drug addict using his memoir of recovery as the centerpiece of the case, I do not think I would have been able to bring myself to do it.”
The most depressing part about the right’s “weaponization of government” blather is that government often is weaponized against disfavored groups — Black people, the poor, immigrants, sex workers, addicts. Prosecutors frequently have something to prove to voters, and they prove they’re tough on crime by going after people who are stigmatized and have few resources with which to defend themselves.
Wealthy, white, connected people like Donald Trump and Hunter Biden are treated less harshly by the criminal justice system in most cases, if only because they can afford high powered lawyers. When they do face consequences, it’s generally a sign that their criminality was so egregious it eroded their usual protections — or, sometimes, as in Hunter’s case, a sign that their privilege couldn’t overcome the stigma attached to addiction and the enmity of political opponents.
In any case, right-wing lies and conspiracy theories about the justice system both erode the rule of law and erode our ability to talk about the ways that the law is in fact inequitable and unjust. Hunter Biden was already remorseful about his past addiction, and no one thinks he’s an ongoing threat; his conviction, like many a drug conviction, helps no one and makes no one safer. If you’re looking for justice, there’s not a lot here to celebrate.
But to the extent the Hunter Biden jury disappointed Comer and all his fellow crawling MAGA minions, they have demonstrated to anyone in doubt that Joe Biden is not in control of DOJ prosecutions, and that Democrats are not wielding the law against Republicans as a political weapon. That may take the wind out of Trump’s orange grievance, and perhaps preserve the Constitution a little longer.
CORRECTION: Hunter Biden’s income from Burisma was incorrect in the original version of this piece. The error has been corrected.
That’s it for today
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No story here in terms of “weaponization of the justice system”. But it’s sad that Hunter really has turned his life around and he appears to be a sacrificial lamb to the MAGAts because of the election. That won’t stop them from digging down in their cesspool of conspiracies to test another one in order to keep their minions fed. You can bet when sentencing happens they’ll scream the Biden family is still benefiting from “something”. Hunter has the wrong last name at the wrong time.
All you have to do is show the picture of Joe hugging his son after the trial to demonstrate GENUINE love of a father for his son, something Eric and Donald jr will never get from their felon father.
Anytime I see an argument claiming, "just a distraction from" or, "doesn't go far enough," what I hear is, "we got nothing."