An unprecedented two weeks of legal drama that yielded historic convictions of a former president and a sitting president’s son have also produced a clear political takeaway.
The survival of the rule of law in America and untainted justice may depend on the choice voters make in November.
The country’s divergent possible paths under President Joe Biden or presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump were highlighted in the way both men, their families and their political operations reacted to the twin trials and verdicts.
Biden made no effort to interfere in the prosecution of his son Hunter with either his executive authority or with the media megaphone of his office. He allowed his own Justice Department to secure a guilty verdict Tuesday that could result in jail time for the recovering addict and hurt his own 2024 campaign. “I will accept the outcome of this case and will continue to respect the judicial process as Hunter considers an appeal,” the president said after the jury found his son guilty of lying on a federal background check form and possessing a gun while addicted to, or using, illegal drugs. He has already said he won’t pardon his son. In his first reaction to the verdict, Hunter Biden didn’t attack the judge or prosecutors, simply saying he was grateful for the love and support of his family and blessed to be clean again.
The Bidens’ comportment contrasted with Trump’s reaction to his own trial and conviction nearly two weeks ago in his hush money case. The ex-president lashed out at witnesses, prosecutors, jurors and the judge. He claimed that “this was done by (the) Biden administration in order to wound or hurt a political opponent.” He blasted “a rigged decision,” despite the fact the Justice Department was not involved in the case brought by the Manhattan district attorney. Since then, Trump has been warning he’d use presidential powers to punish his political opponents and bend the legal system to his will.
“Sometimes revenge can be justified,” Trump told TV psychologist Phil McGraw last week. “I have to be honest. You know, sometimes it can.” The former president told Fox News last week, “I would have every right to go after them,” referring to the Bidens.
Two Trump claims discredited by Hunter Biden verdict
Throughout his trial in Manhattan, his former hometown, Trump, insisted he couldn’t get a fair verdict in a city that votes mostly Democratic. But Delaware is a blue state — and a jury there just convicted the president’s son. One juror told CNN Tuesday that politics never came up in the deliberations. Jurors in Trump’s trial have yet to speak, perhaps because of fears they could be identified following the ex-president’s intimidation tactics.
Had Biden been acquitted, Republicans would surely have argued that a biased jury in a state where everyone seems to know the first family had proven their point. But the guilty verdict blew another of their political arguments out of the water.
Yet one lesson of the Trump-era is that the truth rarely matters. The revealing of inconvenient facts never penetrates the echo chamber that dominates Republican politics and conservative media. So rather than being chastened by the collapse of the Trump persecution narrative and the successful application of the rule of law in a criminal trial, Trump supporters in Congress merely used the Biden verdict to conjure a new round of falsehoods and conspiracy theories.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer said the Delaware trial was “a step toward accountability.” But the Kentucky Republican warned that Justice Department officials were continuing to “cover for the Big Guy, Joe Biden.” Comer repeated accusations that the president had profited from his son’s ethically questionable business operations in Ukraine and China while his father was vice president despite the failure of his committee and the House GOP impeachment probe to find any such evidence.
House Speaker Mike Johnson took a similar approach. “We will continue to demand accountability for the corrupt business dealings of the Biden family,” said the Louisiana Republican, a firm supporter of Trump despite the ex-president’s loss in a recent civil case that found that he, his adult sons and his organization had committed massive insurance and banking fraud. Stephen Miller, Trump’s former White House domestic policy adviser, argued that the Justice Department had actually shown favoritism toward Hunter Biden by not charging him with 50 felonies over foreign influence peddling. The department should “tell him his only way out of life in prison is to testify against the BIG GUY,” Miller said on X.
Some of the GOP reaction to Biden becoming a convicted felon was bizarre. One of Trump’s most fervent supporters, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, baselessly suggested on X that a verdict produced by a jury of his peers was some kind of elaborate plot. “Hunter Biden just became the Deep State’s sacrificial lamb to show that Justice is ‘balanced’ while the other Biden crimes remain ignored,” she wrote on X.
