Yesterday “prosecutors” in the Biden Department of Justice filed charging documents in the Hunter Biden case. Politico has posted copies of the documents here. The charging documents correspond with the plea deal that was arranged to resolve the case. The deal is separately set forth in the cover letter accompanying the charging documents. The letter is accessible here. The related Politico story on the plea deal is here. Six thoughts in the form of bullet-pointed theses:
• We can see why President Biden is proud of his son. He’s not only the smartest person he knows — he’s smarter than President Biden, anyway — he has unbelievable skating ability. Having declared his knowledge of Hunter’s innocence of wrongdoing for several years now, President Biden can now praise Hunter’s endurance in the face of this great injustice. In the same sense, President Biden is innocent too! Only more so.
• One of John Updike’s stories about his alter ego Henry Bech is titled “Bech Third-Worlds It.” (The story is collected in Bech Is Back.) The United States has been Third-Worlding it for a while now. With the federal indictment of President Trump pending in the documents case, the Hunter Biden case reminds us that our system of justice has devolved into a ritualized Third World farce. It is useful in that sense.
• The mainstream press wants it known that it would be unusual for any defendant facing the charges to which Hunter is pleading to face prison time. However, any unprotected defendant guilty of the more serious crimes made out in the underlying facts would be charged with the most serious provable offenses. They would accordingly be doing years in federal prison. Hunter Biden’s lenient charges in light of the underlying facts themselves violate long-standing Department of Justice policies. Andrew McCarthy concisely explains the anomalies in this NRO note. Brett Tolman is good on the disappearance of the felony firearms possession charge in this Federalist column.
• The prosecutors labored for five years to produce this mouse. When IRS whistleblower Gary Shapley disclosed that the prosecutors “slow-walked” the case, he wasn’t kidding. If slow-walking were an Olympic event, these prosecutors would be “in the running” for a gold medal.
• The treatment of Hunter Biden in this case is as destructive in its own way as the treatment of President Trump in the documents case. It alienates every citizen who believes in the United States. It makes us out to be a joke. There is only so much ruin in the country. If we haven’t passed the breaking point, we are in the vicinity.
• The Department of Justice announced in a press release: “The investigation is ongoing.” The “ongoing” investigation would hypothetically involve the Biden family business. By contrast, however, Biden attorney Christopher Clark stated that he understood the probe to be resolved. The contradiction is only seeming. These statements can be reconciled. The investigation is “ongoing” for the purposes of obstructing congressional investigations of the Biden family business.
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