The Wall Street Journal’s Kimberley Strassel notices that Hunter Biden’s federal gun trial in Delaware is scheduled to begin June 3, and that Donald Trump is almost certain to bring it up during his June 27 debate with President Biden.
I can hear someone asking now: “Why does Hunter Biden matter? So the president has a screwed-up son. What does that have to do with how he’s doing his job as president?”
Hunter Biden matters because he illuminates how much the top figures in the Democratic Party do not recognize themselves as unaccountable powerful elites who do not believe that the laws or rules apply to them. This is one of the reasons so many Trump fans hand-wave away the allegation that Trump falsified business records to hide a hush-money payment to Stormy Daniels, or that he violated federal law by taking lots of classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago, or everything associated with “Stop the Steal” and January 6. Their attitude is, “They’re all a bunch of crooks, Trump’s no worse than the rest of them, he’s just getting prosecuted over politics.”
Of course, insisting that your guy shouldn’t be held accountable for wrongdoing because the other guy wasn’t held accountable for wrongdoing is a good way to ensure that no one ever gets held accountable for wrongdoing. Two wrongs don’t make a right. At some point, we need to start holding people accountable for wrongdoing!
Democrats believe that they are the party that is serious about government, the ones who dutifully pay their taxes so that the government can perform its wide-ranging necessary duties. Hunter Biden, however, didn’t pay more than a million dollars in taxes he owed, and then he hired prostitutes and told the IRS that the money he spent on them was a legitimate business expense.
Democrats believe that they are the party that is serious about gun violence and crime. But Hunter Biden lied, under penalty of perjury, on his federal Firearm Transaction Record, certifying that he was “not an unlawful user of, or addicted to, any stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance.” Biden then purchased a Colt Cobra revolver; Hallie Biden, the widow of the late Beau Biden and then Hunter’s lover, was concerned Hunter would do something dangerous with the gun. She took the gun and threw it in a trash can behind a grocery store, only to return later to find it gone. This is not responsible gun ownership.
Wait, it gets worse:
Secret Service agents approached the owner of the store where Hunter bought the gun and asked to take the paperwork involving the sale, according to two people, one of whom has firsthand knowledge of the episode and the other was briefed by a Secret Service agent after the fact.The gun store owner refused to supply the paperwork, suspecting that the Secret Service officers wanted to hide Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were to be involved in a crime, the two people said. The owner, Ron Palmieri, later turned over the papers to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which oversees federal gun laws.
Here is the U.S. Secret Service seemingly attempting to cover up evidence of the former vice president’s son committing a crime. Three years later, Biden would announce that his administration would have a “zero tolerance” policy for gun crimes.
Democrats believe that they are the party serious about opposing the exploitation of women. Hunter Biden has schtupped prostitutes, impregnated a stripper, and then refused to pay child support. Joe Biden had to be shamed into acknowledging the existence of his seventh grandchild.
Democrats believe that they are the party that is serious about the rule of law. Joe Biden spent decades enacting harsher penalties for drug use, possession, and dealing. Hunter Biden broke those laws many, many times and never suffered any legal consequence.
Finally, for decades, Joe Biden pitched himself as this old-fashioned family man, where “his word as a Biden” meant a solemn promise, a man of traditional values shaped by the working-class virtues of Scranton, Pa. It’s just random bad luck that his younger son turned into Caligula.
A lot of people think the myth of Narcissus is about a man who falls in love with himself — but the real “sin” in the myth is that Narcissus does not recognize himself. No one in government can address the deep skepticism and mistrust in the American public if they cannot see themselves and their past records clearly.
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