Hunter Biden came up with a new angle in his fight against indictment on three federal gun charges, and it’s quite an eye-opener, given former President Donald Trump’s status as the obvious victim of several politically motivated prosecutions. The president’s son is now claiming that it is he who has been unfairly prosecuted because of politics. Now, the junior Biden’s legal team is asking the judge, Maryellen Noreika, to subpoena former Attorney General William Barr and two former acting attorneys general, Jeffrey Rosen and Richard Donoghue. That’s not all, though. Hunter Biden also wants a subpoena for Donald Trump himself. In a Nov. 15 filing, Biden’s attorneys say:
“Mr. Biden seeks specific information from three former DOJ officials and the former President that goes to the heart of his defense that this is, possibly, a vindictive or selective prosecution arising from an unrelenting pressure campaign beginning in the last administration, in violation of Mr. Biden’s Fifth Amendment rights under the Constitution.”
Hunter Biden’s legal team is still smarting from its failure to secure a plea deal on tax charges that would have made the firearms charges go away in exchange for a guilty plea. That deal was called into question by Judge Noreika because it contained a clause that practically granted Hunter Biden blanket immunity from all future charges.
Hunter Biden the Political Martyr
William Barr (Photo by Michael Reynolds-Pool/Getty Images)
The new filing claims that then-President Trump pressured his attorney general, Barr, into going after Hunter Biden. It cites a passage from Barr’s book in which the former AG recounts getting a call from Trump, who was asking about the status of the investigation into Joe Biden’s son. Barr claims to have responded, “Dammit, Mr. President, I am not going to talk to you about Hunter Biden. Period!” That doesn’t appear to jibe with Biden’s portrayal of a president bullying his Justice Department into going after the son of a political rival.
The request for subpoenas begs all kinds of questions. Will the judge go along with it? Can a person escape felony gun charges over feeling persecuted? Could Donald Trump now subpoena Joe Biden, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI Director Christopher Wray, and New York Attorney General Letitia James by claiming that the legal actions taken against him were politically motivated? And, not least, should everyone ignore the fact that Trump’s Justice Department did not indict Hunter Biden? That was Joe Biden’s DOJ. There’s one final question that is surely on the minds of everyone following the scandals: Did Hunter Biden perhaps run the idea of subpoenaing Trump by his father – or could that be where he got the idea to begin with? That’s just speculation, of course, but who doesn’t at least suspect a connection to the White House?
The hubris behind this move is somewhat staggering. Given Biden’s past, in which he bemoaned in private communications the lack of respect he got for financially supporting his family for decades; given his drug-fueled binges and being romantically involved with his deceased brother’s wife; given the House Oversight Committee’s assertion that he used the Biden name to score lucrative financial deals and is now using it to claim victimhood, suggests Hunter has a loose grip on what constitutes being a victim.
Hunter Biden will go to trial for his gun felonies in January of 2024. In theory, he is facing more than two decades in prison. In reality, people who make false statements on background check forms when buying a gun are rarely prosecuted, let alone imprisoned. Two of the charges relate to false statements. The other charge, possession of a firearm by someone who is an unlawful user of or addicted to a controlled substance, is also not likely to result in a prison sentence. Knowing this, as Biden surely does, the attempt to pull Trump and senior Trump administration officials into the matter – which would instantly make it a very big deal – smacks, itself, of political partisanship.
