Well, I had the wrong solstice. In the many times we’ve discussed today’s scenario on the podcast and in print, I predicted the Biden Justice Department would give Hunter a sweetheart plea deal right before Christmas, when Washington traditionally does its worst as people tune out the news.
Turns out it was just as summer was about to begin . . . when people are paying attention to the news, when the Biden Justice Department’s special counsel has just charged Donald Trump with 37 felony counts, and when Democrats are trying every way they can think of, without a scintilla of embarrassment, to rile up the Trump-friendly GOP base in hopes of getting Republicans to nominate Trump for the presidency.
Gotta love it when a plan comes together.
Here’s what I wrote six weeks ago:
In a friendly interview on MSNBC on Friday, [President Biden] made it clear to his subordinates at the Biden Justice Department that he has determined his son Hunter should not be charged with a crime. “My son has done nothing wrong,” said the president. “I trust him. I have faith in him, and it impacts my presidency by making me feel proud of him.”
This was blatant interference in the moribund investigation. The Justice Department and its assigned prosecutor, Delaware U.S. attorney David Weiss, have recently come under significant pressure due to whistleblower allegations from law-enforcement agents that there has been significant political interference in the probe and that the FBI has supposedly been sitting on evidence that implicates the president in a bribery scheme.
This has led to speculation that the scam I’ve been predicting for a couple of years is imminent: The Justice Department could soon give Hunter a sweetheart plea deal in which he would admit guilt to the undeniable — a minor tax charge or two, plus, perhaps, a false statement on a required federal firearms form, concealing his drug abuse. Swept under the rug would be the part of the investigation that really matters: The gross monetization of Joe Biden’s political influence and what foreign adversaries like China believed they were buying.
Yup.
Under Justice Department policy, even with a plea agreement, the government is supposed to seek a plea to the “most serious,” readily provable “offense that is consistent with the nature and full extent of the defendant’s conduct.” Hunter Biden committed tax offenses that could have been charged as evasion, which is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment for each count. Furthermore, he made a false statement that enabled him to obtain a firearm; that’s a ten-year felony under legislation pushed through by then-senator Joe Biden to show how very serious Democrats are about gun crime.
Biden apologists have tried to minimize that transaction as a “lie and try” case, which they say is often not prosecuted. But such non-prosecution (though it shouldn’t happen) occurs because of what you’d infer from the “try” part — i.e., the liar got caught and failed to obtain the gun. Hunter’s case, to the contrary, is a lie and succeed case. He got the gun. What’s more, he was then seen playing with it while cavorting with an “escort” (see the New York Post’s pictorial, if you’ve got the stomach for it). Shortly afterwards, he and his then-paramour — Hallie Biden, the widow of his older brother — managed to lose the gun near a school (it was later found by someone else).
Those are the kinds of gun cases that get charged by the Justice Department even if the suspect hasn’t, in addition, committed tax felonies by dodging taxes on the millions of dollars he was paid, apparently for being named Biden. Yet after refusing for years to appoint a special counsel despite the five-alarm conflict of interest attendant to investigating the president’s son ( . . . and family . . . and the president himself), the Biden Justice Department is permitting Hunter Biden to dispose of the case with misdemeanor tax charges that will allow for a probation sentence, and diversion — essentially, no prosecution — on the gun felony that would result in imprisonment for most Americans who engaged in similar conduct.
Quite a deal.
Last week, Trump was flirting with 60 percent in GOP primary polling after being indicted, with a 45-point lead in some surveys. Democrats seem bound and determined to get him to 70.