Dec.11

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

Takeaways from the Hunter Biden Indictment

Hunter Biden was indicted on nine counts of tax charges last week, in addition to an earlier indictment relating to buying a gun in 2018. The new charges were brought by U.S. attorney and Special Counsel David Weiss, who was first appointed by Donald Trump but continued on the case after Joe Biden moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

An obvious question that many people are asking is: "How is all this going to impact the election?" No one knows, of course, but The Hill's senior staff writer Niall Stanage took a whack at it and came up with these items.

• Biden fils and Trump will both be on trial in 2024: Hunter and Trump may both face trials in an election year, but there is a huge difference, much as Republicans would like to blur the line. Hunter is not running for any public office; Trump is running to be President of the United States. If the only issues that came up were tax and gun related, that might not be so harmful to the President. After all, are Republicans going to get up and say: "Evading taxes and trying to buy a gun are terrible, terrible things"? Probably not. But his lifestyle will certainly be a target. He put women with whom he was having sex on the payroll of one of his companies; spent money on drugs, escorts, and exotic cars; and claimed that a $10,000 payment was for joining a golf club but it was actually for joining a sex club. The sheer amount of money he was tossing around conflicts with his father's image of "Scranton Joe." Then there is the question of what Hunter did for the Ukrainian energy company that warranted a $1 million payment. None of this looks good.
  
  
• Biden père is not mentioned in the indictment: Republicans can go after young Biden all they want, but nothing in his indictments even mentions his father. Hunter lived a dissipated life, but there is nothing there to suggest that Joe did anything illegal, immoral, or wrong in any way. Are voters going to be disgusted at Joe for what his adult son did? If that comes up, then the subject of what Jared Kushner did to get the Saudis to give him $2 billion to play with is sure to also come up. Nothing Hunter did compromised national security. That is far less clear about young Jared.
  
  
• Hunter will be forced on the defensive again: The last few months, Hunter was on the offense. He responded to a subpoena from a House committee by saying he would be happy to testify, but only in public so everyone could hear the questions and answers and no one could lie about what they asked and what he said. The committee balked at that (suggesting that indeed the goal was to grill him in private and then lie about what happened). Hunter also sued Rudy Giuliani and others. With a trial pending, he is back to playing defense. However, he has hired Abbe Lowell as his lawyer. Lowell is one of the best defense lawyers in the country and extremely streetwise.
  
  
• The whistleblowers are vindicated: An IRS agent named Gary Shapley blew the whistle on the case when he got Weiss to say that he didn't have charging authority here. That implied that someone higher than he had the final say. Could that be AG Merrick Garland? Another whistleblower, Joseph Ziegler, said that the IRS had pulled its punches on Biden. In retrospect, maybe they actually knew something.
  
  
• Fresh momentum: The worst part of it is that it brings up a story that had kind of died out. Now it will be in the news again and Republicans will pillory Biden Jr. for his dissolute (former) lifestyle and try to somehow connect his father to it. The easiest connection is via the Ukrainian energy company. Were they trying to buy access via Hunter? Maybe. But if Hunter snookered them, took the $1 million, and didn't do anything in return, that simply shows that he is a crafty businessman and doesn't reflect badly on his father at all. He could even say: "I'm a better businessman than Trump. I got some suckers to pay me $1 million and I didn't do a thing for them. Donald should be proud of me."
  

In addition to all these, people are going to be comparing the seriousness of Biden's crimes with that of Trump's crimes. Biden violated tax laws, although he eventually paid all the tax due and penalties. Trump tried to end democracy in America. Do the Republicans really want to talk about the nature of the crimes? If they start the discussion, that is going to come up. (V)