Why the Hunter and Trump cases, despite the media noise, are not equivalent

On one side, we have Hunter Biden, accused not just of tax and gun violations, but of making millions by trading on his last name.

On the other side, we have Donald Trump, accused of conspiring to overturn an election and lying about classified documents he refused to return.

Since the two are often presented as equivalent – especially since a special counsel was named in the Hunter case – I want to say this up front: Even if the president’s son is guilty of everything he’s alleged to have done, and a few more things to boot, the accusations pale in comparison to those leveled against the 45th president.

This is not to take sides or minimize either case.

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One set of charges involves Hunter Biden, who is not and has never been a government official, even though his buckraking schemes are undoubtedly sleazy.

The other set of charges involves a former president trying to block his opponent from taking office after legitimately winning the Electoral College in 2020 – striking at the very heart of democracy.

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Now here are the political crosscurrents that have dominated the debate.

A Trump appointee – U.S. Attorney David Weiss in Delaware, now special counsel – has been investigating Hunter Biden for years. Republicans view him as a patsy who signed off on the sweetheart plea deal that would have kept Hunter out of jail, and while they spent months calling for a special counsel, they now say he’s the wrong guy (and violates the provision that says he should be from outside government).

But Democrats are worried that the special counsel probe could drag on for many months, dogging Joe Biden’s re-election campaign and perhaps unearthing new evidence, fueling the notion that Trump and the Biden family are in similar trouble.

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As for Trump’s legal woes, a fourth indictment accusing him of election interference in Georgia was added to the list late Monday night.

I could go through the evidence against Trump – accounts by insiders that he knew he’d lost the election, that he ordered Mar-a-Lago security camera footage destroyed – but it doesn’t matter. To Trump's detractors, he should be convicted and jailed.

But to the MAGA loyalists, all the charges are the product of a biased and weaponized Justice Department, and the indictments are cooked up by a corrupt establishment. 

The details don’t matter – many of them say they’ve tuned out – because it’s all part of the same get-Trump movement, aided and abetted by the media.

The juries may see things differently – or not. None of the indictments are slam-dunk convictions.

The last piece of this puzzle, according to Trump and his allies, is certainty that this is Biden's Justice Department to knock the former president out of contention.

There is zero evidence that Biden himself had a hand in any of this. Yes, he appointed Merrick Garland, but he knows it would be political suicide to even have a conversation with the DOJ about either the Trump or Hunter investigations. Though the accusation is an article of faith among the Trumpists.

One final point. The president made a serious error in hopping on 20 speakerphone calls and attending a couple of lunches with Hunter and his associates. It doesn’t matter that he spoke in generalities about the weather and so on. He allowed his son to demonstrate clout by showing he could repeatedly get the vice president of the United States on the phone. 

Despite Republican claims to the contrary, there is no evidence that Joe Biden took money from Hunter’s business pals. If any such evidence emerges, his campaign is over. The president has also been in office for five decades and, in my view, would not be dumb enough to take bribes.

Innuendo, or a cryptic email, isn’t enough on such an explosive charge, but that hardly means the president’s conduct was exemplary – and he’s got to stop snapping at reporters, like Fox’s Peter Doocy, who ask him about his son.

Again, the Hunter and Trump cases are not equivalent, but in the oversimplified world of Beltway politics, many find it expedient to play it that way.