Press: The very weak case against Hunter Biden

There’s been a lot of complaints lately about “selective prosecution,” mainly from former President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani and their other alleged co-conspirators. They’ve been unfairly targeted for political reasons, they claim, on criminal charges no other prosecutor would consider.  

Now, you must admit that, no matter how self-serving their complaints, they’re half right. We have indeed seen a shocking case of selective, purely-political prosecution lately. But it’s not against Donald Trump and company. It’s against Hunter Biden.  

Were it not so serious, the case brought by the Department of Justice against the president’s son would be laughed off as a joke. It doesn’t pass the smell test.  

Bowing to political pressure, Attorney General Merrick Garland allowed special counsel David Weiss to indict Biden for three crimes: lying to a gun dealer about his drug use; lying on federal gun registration form 4473; and possession of a gun while using narcotics.   

Consider the facts, as stated in Weiss’s own court filings. True, on Oct. 12, 2018, Hunter Biden walked into a gun store in Delaware and bought a Colt Cobra .38. True, he was still using crack cocaine at the time, but he lied about it, telling the dealer he was not on drugs and making the same claim on the required federal paperwork.   

But Biden possessed the gun for just 11 days, from Oct. 12 to Oct. 23, when his sister-in-law found it and threw it in a dumpster. He never loaded it. He never fired it. He probably never even took it out of its box. And we’re supposed to believe what Hunter Biden did was so serious a threat to our national security that it merits a criminal case brought by the attorney general of the United States and our mighty Department of Justice? Puh-leaze!  

On the face of it, there are at least two serious legal problems with the DOJ case. First, as many prosecutors have pointed out, most people are not charged with lying on a federal firearms application unless they’re also accused of a more serious crime. “It is rare as a stand-alone,” John P. Fishwick Jr, former U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia, told the New York Times. “Those charges are usually brought against convicted felons who illegally possess a gun or who commit a violent or drug-related charge.” Biden did neither. He legally owned the gun, and he’s a first-time, non-violent offender.  

Second, the Supreme Court itself has raised serious questions about the constitutionality of the law under which Biden is charged. Last year, in a big victory for the National Rifle Association (NRA), the court ruled in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen that, under the Second Amendment, the only gun restrictions permitted are those that have a basis in “history and tradition.”   

That decision has triggered an avalanche of challenges to gun laws around the country, including bans on gun ownership by those using controlled substances. And just last month, in another victory for the NRA, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Mississippi law, under which a man was convicted and sent to prison for possessing a firearm while using marijuana, was unconstitutional. The same facts apply to Hunter Biden. If he lived in Mississippi, he’d never have been charged.  

Ironically, the NRA, so quick to defend a gun-owning marijuana user in Mississippi, has done nothing to support a gun-owning cocaine user in Delaware. Why not? For the same reason Merrick Garland filed charges against him. Because his name is Hunter Biden, not Hunter Johnson.  

Press hosts “The Bill Press Pod.” He is the author of “From the Left: A Life in the Crossfire.”