Then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy met with Elon Musk a few months ago, and according to a message the California Republican published to social media, the GOP leader told the billionaire “he would have better luck” with the Justice Department “if he changed his last name to Biden.”
This was, of course, intended to be amusing. In the political narrative Republicans are desperate for the public to believe, the Justice Department has been corrupted to such a degree that the president’s relatives and allies can get away with crimes scot-free.
It was literally the day after the McCarthy/Musk meeting, of course, when federal prosecutors charged Hunter Biden, the president’s son, doing obvious harm to the misguided GOP talking point. A week later, the Justice Department also indicted New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez — a sitting Democratic senator, the year ahead of his 2024 re-election campaign. (Both men have pleaded not guilty.)
Now, Hunter Biden has been charged again. NBC News reported overnight:
Hunter Biden has been indicted on nine tax-related charges, including three felony counts, according to documents filed Thursday in a federal court in Los Angeles. The 56-page filing laid out a series of charges, including allegations that the president’s son failed to pay taxes, failed to file, evaded an assessment and filed a fraudulent form. The indictment says that “rather than pay his taxes, the Defendant spent millions of dollars on an extravagant lifestyle.”
The circumstances remain historic: No child of a sitting president has ever before been prosecuted by the Justice Department.
Circling back to our earlier coverage, this is a detail that’s worth dwelling on, and to a very significant extent, celebrating: In the United States, we take the rule of law so seriously that Justice Department officials felt comfortable prosecuting a sitting president’s kid — twice — without fear of retribution and without interference from the White House.
What’s more, the prosecutor in this case was appointed, not by the Democratic incumbent, but by Donald Trump. Joe Biden kept special counsel David Weiss, a former U.S. attorney, in his position so that he could continue the investigation into his son.
It’s a reminder as to how the system should work.
And yet, one of the animating concepts in contemporary Republican politics is that rascally Democrats have “weaponized” federal law enforcement. The Justice Department and the FBI, leading GOP voices insist, are little more than political tools for the Biden White House and its fiendish allies.
Republicans don’t just want their conspiracy theory to be true; they need it to be true. This simple, baseless idea is the foundation for the party’s Trump defense, fundraising, stump speeches, cable-news segments, and even legislative campaigns on Capitol Hill. In 2023, assertions about a “two-tiered” justice system are foundational to GOP politics.
They’re also routinely discredited by real-world events. Indeed, if Biden and his team were trying to weaponize federal law enforcement, they’ve proven themselves to be incredibly bad at it. Consider a hypothetical scenario. Imagine Trump were president, and his re-election bid was less than a year away. Then imagine that federal prosecutors indicted one of his adult kids, then indicted one of his Senate allies ahead of his own re-election campaign, and then indicted his adult kid again. What do you suppose the reaction would be if Democrats responded to such circumstances by insisting that the Justice Department had been weaponized to favor Republicans? What do you suppose the likelihood would be that Trump, in this hypothetical scenario, would respond to such developments as Biden is responding now — with a hands-off approach? I think it’s fair to say the questions answer themselves. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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