Hunter Biden’s Fate in Hands of Trump-appointed Prosecutor and Trump-appointed Judge

And Republicans are going ballistic.

Well, former President Donald Trump and his Maga chorus got everything they could have asked for; a Trump-appointed federal prosecutor, David Weiss, and a Trump-appointed federal judge, Maryellen Noreika, to decide the fate of President Biden’s son, influence peddler, wheeler-dealer and political pinãta, Hunter Biden.

Instead, Republicans are fuming in high dudgeon as their five-year scheme to connect Hunter and Joe Biden to an elaborate bribery scheme and other criminal activity seems to be floating away on Washington’s hot summer air.

The irony is that Hunter’s business dealings were, and are a legitimate political issue. He traded on the Biden name and his close relationship with his father. Joe Biden certainly knew it and tolerated it, perhaps assuming he would do whatever he could to be helpful to his troubled son as long as whatever help he gave him didn’t cross the proverbial line. One way or another, President Biden will have to deal with political allegations of impropriety even if those allegations are disposed of in the recently announced plea agreement.

The Trump-led Republicans had, and still have, a legitimate issue with Hunter Biden, but they aren’t interested in scoring a cheap political Texas League single. They went for a Grand Slam homer with the Biden crime-family nonsense, and, as often happens when souped-up sluggers go for the fences, they often wind up going down swinging.

Suggesting, with an abundance of hearsay, that an elaborate and illegal scheme existed to influence the Vice President of the United States to effect American policy toward­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ Ukraine and otherwise help his son with other foreign business deals was always risky business. Sooner or later, someone has to produce credible evidence, beyond hearsay, of illegal wrongdoing, or allegations can boomerang. The accuser can wind up looking much worse than the accused, and that’s where the Republican accusers may be headed.

Some high-ranking Republicans have alleged that the Biden family is no more than another American crime family. Yes, that’s the language they use. Trump-appointed federal judge Maryellen Noreika may reject the plea deal that Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss reached with Hunter Biden. It’s possible but far from probable.

That’s because no evidence has been found of anything beyond name-hustling, which is inappropriate but not illegal. Even hyper-partisan Republican Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who co-chaired the Senate Finance and Homeland Security Committee back in 2020, along with Chuck Grassley of Iowa, found that Hunter Biden had “cashed in” on the Biden name, but, alas, found “no massive smoking guns.” Actually, they found no smoking guns, massive or otherwise—just allegations.

The Republicans have labored to turn improper Hunter Biden influence peddling into a bonanza of political profit. This week the lead IRS agent investigating Hunter Biden shared with the House Ways and Means Committee the transcript of a conversation Hunter had with a Chinese official, Henry Zhao. Hunter is heard saying his father, who held no elected office then, was sitting next to him, clearly implying that there would be severe repercussions if specific issues between them weren’t resolved immediately. There was no proof that Joe Biden was with his son during the call, but there was no question that Hunter Biden was using his father’s stature and influence to pressure Zhao.

Hunter and President Biden’s brother, James, did considerable business with the Chinese. According to The Washington Post, they were paid millions to find investment opportunities for the now-defunct energy company CEFC China Energy.

The inference some Republicans are hawking is that, in Washington, the Biden name is to politics what, in New York, the Gambino or Lucchese names were to organized crime.

The Maga crowd, and the media that feeds it, are heavily invested in the improbable proposition that Joe Biden has pocketed millions from his son’s wheeling and dealing. “How else,” one Biden antagonist recently asked me, “could someone earning $169,000 when he left the Senate, $230,000 as Vice President, and $400,000 as President have accumulated a net worth of nearly ten million dollars?”

Well, not from hiding bribes. According to Forbes magazine, which reviewed Biden’s tax filings, he earned $8 million with his second book, an additional $1.8 million from book-tour speaking fees, and another $2.4 million over nearly three years from general speaking fees. He was paid an additional $775,000 from the University of Pennsylvania to lead the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, and his federal pension is estimated to be worth about $1 million. Add to this the two homes (a residence in Wilmington and a beach home on the Delaware coast) that he and his wife own, which have appreciated over the years to an estimated $4 million, and, on paper, the President is worth somewhere upwards of $10 million. Furthermore, the income enumerated on his tax return is easily confirmable.

It takes either incredible naivete or callous abandonment of rational thinking to believe that Joe Biden, whose glide path to the Presidency of the United States was apparent years before Hunter joined the Board of Ukrainian oil and gas company Burisma Holdings, would be involved in illegal behavior claimed by former President Trump and his hosanna chorus of followers.

Nonetheless, Joe Biden does have a Hunter Biden problem. Hunter’s plea deal for the offenses he committed, i.e., willful non-payment of taxes and the illegal purchase of a handgun, in juxtaposition to former President Trump’s criminal indictment for taking, hiding, and lying about classified government documents provides enormous fodder for the Republican political grist mill. Republicans will make unequal justice under the law the cornerstone of the 2024 election campaign.

The plea deal won’t make the Hunter Biden issue go away. Hunter Biden’s value to his clients was his perceived connections, not his business prowess. Walter Shaub, a former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics and who now works as an ethics authority with the Project on Government Oversight, has, in the past, been critical of Hunter Biden’s influence peddling and urged that neither the White House nor the Department of Justice interferes in any way with the U.S. Attorney’s investigation in Delaware, which has now resulted in the plea deal.

Republicans, as might be expected, are furious at the plea agreement U.S. Attorney Weiss is scheduled to present in federal court next month, given the aggressive case the Justice Department is pursuing against former President Trump.

The two cases, of course, have nothing in common. Trump has, in effect, been caught red-handed taking and hiding highly sensitive government files that he had no right to have and lying about it in order to keep the documents. His defenses are ridiculous.

The public on-camera defense Trump makes of his actions is breathtaking to watch and listen to. They are so irrational one assumes he is shouting them from the rooftops to eventually convince a jury that he really believed he was entitled to these classified and top-secret documents that he took and then hid from his attorneys.

Trump’s big problem is that under the Espionage Act, which is the law that makes his possession of these files so serious, there is no legal excuse for his having or hiding these files. It is exceedingly difficult to get away with breaking the law under the Espionage Act simply by claiming you had declassified top-secret documents by the very act of taking them and then refusing to return them.

Now, hapless Hunter Biden does have a troubled and tortured past. His life has been a saga of drug addiction and aberrant behavior. He was drummed out of the U.S. Navy Reserves for failing a drug test almost as soon as he signed up, and his life has been somewhat of a train wreck ever since. It isn’t necessary to recount all of the sordid details to conclude that Hunter Biden has been a very troubled son of the President of the United States and somewhat of a ticking timebomb within the Biden family.

U.S. Attorney Weiss or, perhaps, Attorney General Garland should clearly and publicly state why none of the more outrageous claims the Republicans have made about Hunter Biden and his father have been addressed in the plea arrangement. Given the enormous publicity accorded to Republican claims of influence peddling, bribery, and other Hunter Biden alleged illegal shenanigans, the Justice Department should address why the Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney chose not to prosecute after investigating these allegations. Two former IRS agents have alleged interference in the investigation by the Justice Department, which Attorney General Garland has strongly denied.

Politically crafted allegations can create an abundance of smoke even without much fire. It seems the Trump-appointed prosecutor charged with determining whether there was evidence of a father-son corruption scheme apparently found, as Novelist Gertrude Stein once famously observed, there was simply little or no there, there. Indeed, if that is the case, U.S. Attorney Weiss should unambiguously say so.

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