Dem
49
GOP
51
Our long national nightmare is over. Yesterday, the Department of Justice announced that Hunter Biden has pleaded guilty in his tax evasion case. So, there will be no trial. Biden will be sentenced about a month after the election, and while he faces a maximum sentence of 17 years, he's not going to get anywhere near that much time.
We debated whether we should even take note of this story, but we decided to write something brief because we are 100% certain that Donald Trump and his surrogates will try to weaponize this. We are also 99.9% certain it won't work. Hunter Biden is not running for office in 2024, or any other year. No members of his family are running for office in 2024, or any other year. The various attacks on Kamala Harris have not landed, and we just don't see how "But... but... but... she served with a president whose son is a tax cheat, so she is a very, very bad person" can possibly connect.
Meanwhile, we still believe that the father will pardon his son on his way out the backdoor of the White House. First, Joe Biden is a father first and a politician second. Second, it is a fair supposition that if Joe were not president, Hunter would not have been prosecuted. Third, if the concern is political damage, it's hard to see how that might work. Even if Harris wins, will people not only blame her for the fatherly actions of her predecessor, but continue to do so in 4 years? As a reminder, Donald Trump pardoned a whole penitentiary's worth of crooked associates, and paid no price for it at all. (Z)