Republicans have repeated the two-word question ad nauseum in recent years: “Where’s Hunter?” Much of the party has seemed fixated on Hunter Biden, investing an unnerving amount of time focusing on the personal and legal difficulties of the president’s son.
As of Tuesday, however, the “Where’s Hunter?” taunt has an answer: President Joe Biden’s only living son is headed to court, where he’ll accept a plea agreement with a Trump-appointed prosecutor and move forward with his recovery.
Upon learning about the state of the investigation, Republicans en masse thanked the U.S. attorney’s office, expressed satisfaction with the legitimacy of the process, vowed to shift their efforts toward meaningful governing, and celebrated the fact that in the United States, we take the rule of law so seriously that Justice Department officials felt comfortable prosecuting a sitting president’s kid without fear of retribution and without interference from the White House.
No, I’m just kidding. What Republicans actually did was throw a big tantrum, as part of a larger campaign to delegitimize their own country’s justice system.
Prominent GOP voices said the president’s son received a “sweetheart deal.” (He didn’t.) They said the younger Biden would’ve received a harsher penalty were it not for his family connections. (That’s wrong, too.) They said it’s unfair that Donald Trump is facing the possibility of a harsher sentence. (The former president’s alleged crimes are far more serious.) They’ve even suggested there was political interference in the investigation. (The Trump-appointed prosecutor disagreed.)
But perhaps most importantly, congressional Republicans assured the political world that they’re not going to shift their focus at all. As a New York Times report summarized:
Congressional Republicans on Tuesday blasted the plea deal Hunter Biden reached with the Justice Department, accusing President Biden of orchestrating a lenient penalty for his son and promising to intensify their investigations of the Biden family.
In other words, what the public can look forward to is several months of GOP lawmakers pursuing a weird conspiracy theory — why would a Trump-appointed prosecutor allow a Democratic president to influence an investigation and not say anything? — while remaining fixated on Biden’s family. In fact, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer last night referenced plans to seek testimony from the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney, David Weiss, which is in keeping with the Republicans’ broader embrace of “investigate the investigation” tactics. All the while, Republicans will almost certainly continue to lie about the available evidence. House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, for example, condemned the plea deal as the “epitome of the politicization and weaponization of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice.” To support her partisan attack, the New York Republican pointed to … nothing.
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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