Republicans stick to attacks on criminal justice system and repeat Trump’s line after Hunter Biden’s conviction

PHOENIX – Republicans are responding to Hunter Biden’s conviction on a federal weapons charge with a sort of “That’s it?”

They are loyal to Donald Trump and largely echoed his claim that the Justice Department handled President Joe Biden’s son with kid gloves while zealously pursuing Trump. They capitalized on the attention given to Hunter Biden’s conviction for buying a gun while on a drug habit and advanced unproven or disproven allegations that Joe Biden acted – while serving as vice president – to advance the foreign business interests of his family members.

The Republican argument that Joe Biden is directing prosecutors to target political opponents has been weakened by the fact that the Biden-led Justice Department is prosecuting the president’s son – with Biden refusing to drop the investigation or pardon Hunter Biden. But by making this argument, Republicans may be trying to distract from Trump’s own stated intentions to use the criminal justice system against his opponents if he returns to the White House.

During his presidency, Trump sought to undermine the Justice Department’s investigation into his campaign’s alleged ties to Russia and pardoned numerous former campaign aides, friends and donors. And during the campaign, Trump repeatedly said he was the victim of a “rigged” system and promised to appoint a special prosecutor to target Biden and his family.

Republicans in the House of Representatives voted on Wednesday to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, further escalating their dispute with the Justice Department.

And Trump sent a fundraising email with the subject line “Bring out the guillotine!” The email claimed that Trump’s critics had a “sick dream” of seeing him beheaded — the latest example of Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric since his hush money conviction.

Under a deal with prosecutors last year, Hunter Biden was supposed to plead guilty to tax crimes and avoid prosecution in the gun case if he stayed out of trouble for two years. But the deal fell through after Trump’s nominee questioned unusual aspects of the proposed agreement and lawyers were unable to resolve the matter.

He was sentenced on Tuesday and faces 25 years in prison. However, as a first-time offender, he will likely face a much shorter sentence or avoid prison altogether.

He is due to go on trial in California in September for failing to pay $1.4 million in taxes. Republicans in Congress have signaled that they will continue their stalled impeachment proceedings against the president. The president has not been accused of any wrongdoing by prosecutors investigating his son.

Biden definitively ruled out a pardon for his son in an interview with ABC News last week. White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on Wednesday did not rule out the possibility that the president could issue a possible commutation, which could reduce or eliminate a sentence while the conviction remains in effect.

Hunter Biden’s conviction came weeks after a New York jury found Trump guilty on 34 counts related to paying hush money to a porn star during the 2016 election campaign. Trump falsely claims the verdict was “rigged.” Biden said he accepted his son’s verdict.

Trump’s campaign issued a statement calling the verdict against Hunter Biden “nothing more than a distraction from the real crimes of the Biden family,” and several of his allies followed suit.

“Remember, this was Joe Biden’s corrupt Justice Department trying to negotiate outside immunity that had nothing to do with this case,” said Elise Stefanik, a New York Republican and a contender for Trump’s vice presidential nomination. “Today is the first step in holding the Biden crime family accountable.”

Senator JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio and also a vice presidential candidate, shared a post by Ohio Republican Senate candidate Bernie Moreno saying the gun charges were designed to “insulate and protect” the president.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said the guilty verdict was “appropriate” and did not undermine his own criticism of a two-tier legal system for Trump and the Bidens.

“Every case is different,” Johnson said. “And here the evidence was clearly overwhelming. I don’t think that’s the case in the Trump trial, and all of the charges against him were obviously brought for political reasons. Hunter Biden is a separate incident.”

Democrats have not attacked the Justice Department or the courts. The third-strongest Democrat in the House, Pete Aguilar (D-California), said: “Hunter Biden sat before a jury of his colleagues, a verdict was reached and Democrats in the House believe in the rule of law and that is why we respect that verdict.”

As president, Trump repeatedly attempted to influence the criminal investigation into whether his 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia.

He fired the FBI director who led the investigation, berated the attorney general he appointed for recusing himself from leading the probe, and directed his White House counsel to call for the firing of special counsel Robert Mueller. These and other actions contributed to an investigation into whether he had illegally attempted to obstruct the Russia investigation; Mueller found evidence of obstruction but refused to make a determination about whether Trump had broken the law.

Recently, Trump and his allies have hinted that if elected, he might advocate for the imprisonment of political opponents – a stance he advocated before his presidency.

In an interview with Fox & Friends this month, he falsely claimed he did not use the words “lock them up” when referring to Hillary Clinton and her 2016 opponent using a private email server to transmit classified information while secretary of state. He said he could have tried to put them in jail, but that “would have been a terrible thing to do.”

He suggested that things were different now that he was facing four serious crimes, including the New York case that ended in a conviction.

“And then this happened to me, and that’s why I think about it differently,” he said.

The charges against Hunter Biden stem from a dark period in his life when he experienced a deteriorating condition following the death of his brother Beau Biden from cancer in 2015. Jurors found him guilty of lying to a state-licensed gun dealer when he purchased a revolver in 2018. He made false statements on the application, claiming he did not use drugs, and possessed the weapon illegally for 11 days.

Many members of Trump’s Republican Party are strongly opposed to gun control, and some of his supporters question whether Hunter Biden should be tried for gun possession.

Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and prominent Trump supporter posted on X: “Convicting Hunter Biden for gun possession is kind of stupid.”

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters at the Capitol that the gun charges were a “waste of time,” but said other allegations related to Hunter Biden’s taxes were “serious.”

“I just think he’ll be punished,” Graham said, adding that the average citizen would “end up in the drug division or something like that.”

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky made similar remarks.

“Hunter may deserve to go to jail for anything, but buying a gun is not it,” Massie posted on X. “There are millions of marijuana users in this country who own guns, and none of them should be in jail for buying or possessing a firearm in violation of the law.”

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Tucker reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves and Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.