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Matt Rourke / AP
Voices across the spectrum are reflecting on the impact of Hunter Biden’s felony convictions.
On Tuesday, President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, was convicted of three felony charges for unlawfully possessing a firearm, submitting a false statement into a federal record, and lying about his drug use to purchase a gun in 2018.
This is the first time in history that the son of a sitting U.S. president has been criminally convicted.
“I am more grateful today for the love and support I experienced this last week from my family, my friends and my community than I am disappointed in the outcome,” Hunter Biden said in a statement shortly after the verdict. His lawyer, Abbe Lowell, vowed to “vigorously pursue all the legal challenges available to Hunter.”
Several commentators on the right noted that during the trial, the Department of Justice confirmed the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s laptop, which linked Hunter Biden to payments from foreign governments and was originally deemed disinformation by many outlets on the left. The left tended to focus more on the DOJ’s intentions in prosecuting the Hunter Biden case and on President Biden’s choice not to intervene on his son’s behalf.
In MSNBC (Left bias), Hayes Brown argued that “At any point, with the stroke of a pen, Biden could have made those charges go away,” so the president’s decision to accept the outcome of the trial demonstrates he might be “taking pains not to serve as an enabler for a child who has struggled with drug addiction.” Brown said President Biden’s ability to stay “true to his word” stands in “sharp contrast to former President Donald Trump’s behavior,” who “was quick to use the pardon system as a blunt force tool to get what he wanted, dangling pardons to wavering allies who might be considering cooperating with the investigations of him.”
A writer for the New York Post Opinion (Right bias) wrote that the Wilmington jury judged the evidence honestly: “In the end, Hunter Biden and his army of pricey lawyers got tripped up by their own arrogance and overconfidence...For once, a Biden has been held accountable, although the gun charges were the least serious of the crimes considered by investigators in the troubled five-year financial probe of Hunter in Delaware.” The writer added that Hunter Biden “assumed his father’s power would protect him, as it has all his life.”
A Washington Examiner (Lean Right bias) piece by Tiana Lowe Doescher argued that “although federal prosecutors determined they had the evidence to charge Hunter Biden with tax and gun crimes as early as October 2022, the DOJ was still pushing a sweetheart deal that would have insulated him from all future criminal charges, including those pertaining to his corrupt business practices and international solicitation of sex workers possibly trafficked, as late as July 2023.” Concluding that “even if this trial followed the law as written, the system that very nearly succeeded in protecting Hunter Biden still has not done things by the book.”
An opinion contributor for the Daily Beast (Left Bias) said Hunter Biden can thank Merrick Garland for his conviction. “We have Attorney General Merrick Garland to thank for the fact the case was brought, and that it was tried in the politically explosive time of a presidential campaign, only a month before the start of the Republican convention and two months before the Democratic one…Biden’s attorney general is so scared of being viewed as partisan that he allowed prosecutors to be far tougher on the president’s son than they would be on most defendants,” he said. “Whether or not Hunter Biden succeeds in overturning his conviction on appeal, the political and personal damage is already done.”