Of the Hunter Biden deal, Dan writes that
the charges here seem surgically calculated to insulate the president and the rest of the Biden family. Nothing here implicates millions of dollars flowing through shell accounts to the Bidens from shady or tyrannical foreign regimes. Nothing here relates to mishandling of classified documents. If you’re Joe Biden, having the DOJ mostly painlessly resolve the only other sources of leverage it had over Hunter Biden is cause for relief.
Another way in which the deal insulates President Biden: It prevents his son’s lawyers from making a case in open court that would have been deeply embarrassing to his father’s political agenda. As Politico reported earlier this month, Hunter Biden’s
lawyers have already told Justice Department officials that, if their client is charged with the gun crime, they will challenge the law under the Second Amendment, according to a person familiar with the private discussions granted anonymity because they are not authorized to speak publicly. That could turn a case that is already fraught with political consequences into a high-profile showdown over the right to bear arms.
The dispute would come as the White House fights to tighten gun laws. And it could put conservative gun-rights enthusiasts, who typically criticize the Biden family, in unusual alignment with the president’s son.
Joe Biden is famous for his support for stricter gun-control laws, stricter drug-control laws, and stricter laws in the areas where guns and drugs intersect. Obviously, Joe did not want to see Hunter’s lawyers arguing that, under the recent Bruen decision that Joe vocally opposes, all of those laws are unconstitutional.
Which may well be the reason that Hunter’s lawyers “told Justice Department officials that, if their client is charged with the gun crime, they will challenge the law under the Second Amendment.” As a threat, this was extremely potent. Under the American system of government, the Hunter Biden case has ultimately been brought not by the DOJ, but by the authority vested in the president of the United States. Per Article II, the prosecution would be most literally rendered as Biden v. Biden. How excruciating it would have been for Joe to have a case such as this roiling in the background while he insisted cloyingly from his podium that, unlike all the Bad People out there who disagree with him, all he wants for America is a return to “common sense.”