The White House has no illusions of Hunter Biden’s plea deal cooling Republicans’ attacks on the president. To Bidenworld, the GOP onslaught is a losing strategy.
Republicans, led by Rudy Giuliani, tried to gin up Hunter’s murky Ukrainian dealings into a corruption scandal implicating his father—an obsession that instead led to President Donald Trump’s first impeachment.
Republicans are clearly not abandoning their assault, however. The party line Tuesday was that Hunter Biden got a “sweetheart deal,” despite the fact that Hunter may in fact have been treated tougher than most civilians: Similar transgressions by the nonfamous routinely go unprosecuted.
Biden’s team had no illusions about Hunter’s deal changing Republican behavior—and for now, they’re just fine with that political dynamic. Not that they are in favor of anyone spending taxpayer dollars to continue to chase phantasmic conspiracy theories. But the president’s advisers would be thrilled to see Republicans again wasting time and energy on the same strategy the GOP pursued exhaustively three years ago. They will even more happily take the same general election opponent for Biden, and the same outcome in November 2024.