Did DOJ let Hunter Biden off easy?

Hunter Biden reached a plea deal with federal prosecutors this week, agreeing to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax offenses and avoiding jail time. Biden will be sentenced to probation for failing to pay his 2017 and 2018 taxes on time. He also will avoid being charged with lying about his drug use when he bought a gun, as long as he complies with rules set by the Justice Department. He has to remain drug-free for two years, and can never own a gun again.

Republicans immediately accused the Justice Department of going easy on President Biden's son, letting him off with a "slap on the wrist" while aggressively prosecuting former President Donald Trump over his handling of classified documents. Trump likened the deal to a "mere 'traffic ticket." "If you're Biden's leading political opponent, the DOJ will try to put you in prison," House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) tweeted. "If you're Biden's son, the DOJ will give you a sweetheart deal."

But some legal experts said Hunter Biden was treated fairly. "The laws were enforced as if it had been anybody else," Maggie Abdo-Gomez, a Miami tax attorney and former IRS lawyer, told Politico. "I would say probably a little stricter, because failure to pay is very common." Attorney General Merrick Garland said he kept his promise to "leave this matter in the hands of the United States attorney who was appointed by the previous president," Trump, and gave him "full authority to decide the matter as he decided was appropriate." Did the Justice Department go easy on Hunter Biden, or treat him like anyone in his situation?

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DOJ is protecting the Bidens

This deal "reeks of political favoritism," said Margot Cleveland at The Federalist. Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss announced this sweetheart deal for Hunter Biden "only weeks after Americans learned that a 'highly credible' confidential human source had reported that the Ukrainian owner of Burisma paid the father-son duo each $5 million in bribes." It seems "like an obvious attempt to quell the growing scandal that threatened to engulf the president." Hunter Biden's failure to pay taxes on two years of income, and his illegal gun purchase, were slam dunks. Weiss should have filed these charges in 2019, before President Biden's election, but he didn't, because of "politics." This kind of "weaponization and political favoritism of the DOJ and FBI" has to stop.

"Must be nice," said the Boston Herald in an editorial. This cushy deal really put "the perks of being a fortunate son" on "full display." It's true that a deal this good, sparing someone who admittedly broke serveral laws any jail time, "isn't unheard of." But it's not the kind of free pass that's available to "ordinary people." The gun charge — felony possession of a firearm by a drug user — can carry a penalty of 10 years in prison. But "nepo babies, especially those with political clout," get special treatment. "What's particularly galling about Hunter Biden's deal is that his dad Joe continues to talk tough about guns."

Hunter Biden got no special treatment

President Biden "appears to have been true to his promise that he wouldn't interfere in the probe," said The Washington Post in an editorial. The president and his attorney general let Weiss — who was appointed by Trump — "make his own prosecutorial decisions at the end of a five-year investigation, and a federal judge still needs to approve the agreement." And even though Hunter Biden won't spend any time behind bars, this is "by no means exoneration." Hunter Biden is admitting misdemeanors and now prosecutors won't have to pursue "a smorgasbord of charges that might or might not have stuck." And he's "still under scrutiny" for lots of "questionable behavior" that came to light when his abandoned laptop became public, including his "dealings with a Chinese energy company."

Republicans are the ones playing politics by trying to conflate Hunter Biden's case with Trump's, said Matt Ford at The New Republic. "Misappropriating national secrets and showing them to random Mar-a-Lago guests is, generally speaking, a graver offense than failing to pay taxes." But the "deeper truth about Republican frustration over the Hunter Biden plea agreement" is that the GOP is pushing investigations not to "actually find evidence of criminal activity, as much as they would have welcomed it, but to create an aura of corruption and criminality around the 2020 and 2024 Democratic presidential candidate in much the same way they did against the party's 2016 nominee. To their immense frustration, Republicans haven't yet succeeded in that enterprise against Biden."