This puts the lid on an investigation opened five years ago, when Donald Trump was in the White House. Conservatives, who have spent weeks condemning the “two-tiered justice system” that indicted former President Trump earlier this month, are using the same line to attack what they see as preferential treatment on the part of federal prosecutors in Hunter Biden’s case.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) issued a statement in which he vowed to continue his committee’s political, often haphazard probes of the Biden family’s “schemes”:
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) shares that view. She tweeted, “It’s no coincidence that less than a week after President Trump is arraigned by the DOJ, Hunter Biden is pleading guilty to a sweetheart deal with no jail time.”
Greene also outdid Blackburn by alleging the Bidens did not just take in $5 million in bribes, but “tens of millions of dollars from foreign countries,” adding, “We are controlled by COMMUNISTS!!”
In general, Republicans have rarely been as disciplined in their messaging as they have been on the subject of Hunter Biden, whom they’ve found to be an easy target. And rhetorically, it’s easy to pivot from condemning the alleged injustice of Trump’s indictment to condemning the alleged injustice of the president’s son receiving a plea deal; conservative media and Republican elected officials have financial and political incentives to maintain the narrative that the justice system favors one party over the other, especially when their own party’s leader keeps running afoul of the law. But one point worth taking seriously in all this is the suggestion that Hunter Biden is facing a gentler outcome that most Americans would in a similar position. That observation can be applied more generally, of course: Both Trump and Hunter Biden have behaved in ways that would put the average American in a much deeper legal hole with far fewer resources to get themselves out.