Jun.23

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Hunter Biden Was Treated Fairly

When we wrote about the plea deal extended to First Son Hunter Biden earlier this week, we expressed the view that it wasn't a sweetheart deal and that the punishment fit the crime. This was our non-expert, non-lawyer sense of things, though we also linked to a piece in which a couple of experienced prosecutors expressed the same view.

Since then, countless outlets have run "Was it a fair deal?" pieces, and there is an overwhelming consensus that it was (see here, here, here, here, and here for examples). There are several recurring themes, most of which we pointed out in our original item:

• Biden's a first-time offender
• The prisons are already bulging at the seams
• He made restitution for his tax-related crimes
• He's gotten gun counseling, and has agreed to get more
• The gun crime he committed (lying about drug use on his gun application form) is rarely charged, and in those cases where it is charged, it's almost always because the gun was used in the commission of a crime. Biden only had the gun for a couple of weeks, and did not use it to commit a crime.

The one mitigating factor that we did not include in our original piece is that the meat of the case against Biden, which was the felony gun charge, was not a slam dunk. That law is actually being challenged in federal court right now, and if it's struck down, then we're down to just misdemeanor tax evasion charges where restitution has been made. Hardly the stuff of a stint at ADX Florence.

All of this said, if you talk to enough lawyers, you're eventually going to get some contrary opinions. One is reminded of Thomas Jefferson's observation about the House of Representatives: "That one hundred and fifty lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected." Among the various items we looked at on this subject, the only one where the legal experts said Biden might indeed have gotten special treatment was the one from Politico. That outlet talked to four lawyers; two of those said the handling of the Biden case was unremarkable while the other two said that he might have gotten favorable treatment.

The crux of the argument made by the latter duo is that when the government goes to the trouble of conducting an investigation, it's not typically satisfied to secure only misdemeanor convictions, it wants felonies. Of course, the counterargument to that is that the government generally launches an investigation only when things smell extra rotten in the state of Denmark, whereas in this case the government's reasons for commencing an investigation are... more complex, to say the least.

In short, if you squint very carefully, Biden might possibly have gotten the friends and family discount. But the weight of the evidence, and the weight of expert opinion, is that he was treated the same as any other defendant. (Z)