Inspector Clouseau gets his man
The Republican dog has caught the Democratic car bumper. I guess that means Hunter Biden can’t run for president because he’s a convicted felon.
Oh wait.
After years of chasing the addicted son as a stand-in for the “crimes” of Joe Biden, GOP attack dogs finally got their man when a Delaware jury found Hunter Biden guilty on three gun-related charges.
“Compassionate conservatives,” fierce defenders of the 2nd Amendment, don’t seem to know how to react to this moment.
“This trial has been nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden Crime Family, which has raked in tens of millions of dollars from China, Russia and Ukraine,” Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Donald Trump’s Republican presidential campaign, said in reaction to the verdict.
Oops, they failed to identify her as a spokesperson for convicted felon Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump still leads 34 convictions to three.
Of course it should also be pointed out that no evidence has been found to back up those allegations about the “Biden Crime Family” by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, the GOP’s very own Inspector Clouseau, uh, Javert. Not that something like that would stop him:
“Hunter Biden’s sweetheart plea deal was smoked out after scrutiny by a federal judge," House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement after Tuesday's verdict. "Today’s verdict is a step toward accountability but until the Department of Justice investigates everyone involved in the Bidens’ corrupt influence peddling schemes that generated over $18 million in foreign payments to the Biden family, it will be clear department officials continue to cover for the Big Guy, Joe Biden."
In reality, the Hunter Biden story is a sad one. He and his brother Beau survived a car crash in 1972 that killed their mother and sister. Beau died of brain cancer in 2015. The tragedies led the younger son to do some really stupid things, which caught up to him when the Delaware jury returned its verdict.
Ironically, the trial followed just after a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in pursuit of a scheme to buy the silence of a porn star in the weeks before the 2016 election.
No guns or drugs were involved, even though Trump once boasted he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot someone and not lose any votes.
By the way, that convicted felon is apparently still in possession of a firearm, which would be a violation of the terms of his release. However the weapon is in Florida, where the 2nd Amendment, er, trumps all.
Unlike his predecessor, Joe Biden says he accepts the jury verdict and will not pardon him for the federal crimes for which he was found guilty.
And unlike Melania Ttump, who was nowhere to be found during her husband’s trial, Hunter’s step-mother, Jill Biden was present in court. And Joe Biden returned from a European visit to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day to spend some time with his son before flying back to Italy for the G-7 summit.
All of which leaves the family values party flailing, searching for conspiracies to explain the problem with the verdict in a trial brought by Joe Biden’s Justice Department (and not the Manhattan district attorney).
“Many Trump allies had been secretly rooting for an acquittal. The talking points wrote themselves: It would have been yet more evidence that the United States justice system was rigged in favor of the Bidens and against the Trumps. Tuesday’s guilty verdict was inconvenient to that narrative.”
The appeal, even though it will not be resolved before the election, may well be equally inconvenient. It will likely argue the charges violated his 2nd Amendment rights.
And he may get a boost from the Alito-Thomas Court in the next few weeks as they prepare to issue a ruling in a case about a section of federal law that bars an individual subject to a domestic violence restraining order from possessing a firearm.
Then what would be the next act for the dog that caught the car?