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Low on law, high on theater. That's the best way to watch Hunter Biden's stunt at the Capitol on Wednesday morning. The president's son crashed a public meeting where the House Oversight Committee was scheduled to vote on a resolution, on the basis of which the full House would end up charging him with contempt of Congress (ironically, for defying a subpoena which demanded that it be presented at the Capitol). so the committee could remove him.
I say “little law” because, in the absence of enforcement, the law is just a topic of conversation.
In the federal justice system, for example, we have law enforcement: if you defy a subpoena, the FBI arrests you, the judge can find you guilty of contempt and jail you until you agree to comply, and the Department of Justice can criminally prosecute you for your challenge, even if you have tried to cure it in the meantime. He will likely be convicted and spend even more time in jail.
HUNTER BIDEN MAKES SHOCKING APPEARANCE AT HIS OWN CONTEMPT HEARING
That's why people don't challenge subpoenas backed by judicial enforcement. And because contempt in the justice system is a truly powerful legal process, people don't try tricks, like Hunter's, that try to fool people into believing they have complied when they haven't. That insults intelligence. Pro tip: It's not a good idea to insult a federal judge's intelligence.
Hunter is challenging the Republican-controlled House because, if you'll pardon the pun, he knows he's playing with the house's money.
In our constitutional system of separate powers, Congress makes laws but the executive branch – the Department of Justice – enforces them. Congress can oversee and vote to label recalcitrant witnesses as detractors. But it can't process them. Only the Department of Justice can do that.
I know this will come as a surprise, but Hunter and his lawyers are very confident that the Biden Justice Department will not prosecute the president's son at the request of a Republican-controlled House, which the Biden White House routinely despises for threatening to impeach the president and portrays him as harassing the hunter who is not doing well.
Hunter Biden, son of President Biden, follows his attorney Abbe Lowell as they leave the Rayburn House Office Building following a surprise appearance at a meeting of the House Oversight Committee and a meeting to vote on whether Biden should be held in contempt of Congress for failing to respond to a request to testify before the House last month, at the Capitol in Washington, on January 10, 2024. (REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque)
What about Steve Bannon? What happens with Pedro Navarro? Yes, yes, I know, these are Trump advisers who Biden's Justice Department prosecuted for disobeying subpoenas from the much-vaunted House January 6 Committee. Citing Bannon and Navarro precedents, Republicans argue that Biden's attorney general, Merrick Garland, and Biden's appointed U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., Matthew Graves, should hold Hunter in contempt. Otherwise, that will illustrate the corruption of the administration's “two-tier justice system.”
Dream in.
HOUSE COMMITTEE APPROVES RESOLUTION TO HOLD HUNTER BIDEN IN CONTEST OF CONGRESS, MOVES TO THE FLOOR
There is no doubt that the Biden era has been a boom time for two-tier justice. But here's the thing: Democrats know they can't suffer any more political damage than they already have.
Remember, Democratic prosecutors in Washington and across the country have charged former President Donald Trump, Biden's likely 2024 opponent, not once but four times, all methodically timed to have maximum impact on the election. They have turned a blind eye to months of deadly violence by the radical left, yet prosecuted 1,200 people – most of them sad sacks – in connection with a three-hour riot at the Capitol in which the only person killed He was a troublemaker.
At the same time, Biden's Justice Department intentionally let the statute of limitations expire for Biden family influence-peddling transactions that occurred when Biden was vice president. Furthermore, the Justice Department embarrassed itself by charging Hunter with long-standing tax and weapons crimes only after prosecutors tried to make the case disappear in an embarrassing plea deal. Even when the indictment was finally filed, prosecutors took pains not to mention the president's name in it. And no sensible person doubts that, once the 2024 election is over, President Biden will forgive his daughter.
Look, the two-tiered ship of justice has already sailed. Whatever political damage he may do to Biden's re-election bid, he has already done it. Attorney General Merrick Garland is already neck-deep in preferential treatment for the hapless Hunter; a little more won't matter.
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Garland, furthermore, has a story to tell. Historically speaking, the accusations against Bannon and Navarro are the exception. For decades before that, the Justice Department virtually never prosecuted people for defying congressional subpoenas. And even in the J6 Committee's crusade, Garland rejected demands from the then-Democratic-controlled Congress that he prosecute Trump advisers Mark Meadows and Dan Scavino for contempt. There is plenty of precedent to support the decline.
What's more, because the plea deal fell through and the resulting publicity was so damaging, Hunter already faces two indictments. It is true that the law requires you to appear for a deposition if you have been subpoenaed, but it does not require you to testify: you have the Fifth Amendment privilege of refusing to provide self-incriminating testimony.
Had he appeared at the Oversight Committee's deposition, Hunter would have accepted the fifth. That would have been politically damaging to his father, which is why Hunter is trying to fool the public into believing that bad Republicans are preventing him from testifying.
However, in exercising its prosecutorial discretion, the Biden Justice Department will rationalize that the House subpoena was itself a political stunt because the Committee knows that Hunter's lawyers would advise him not to answer questions.
Biden's Justice Department will say that Republicans issued the subpoena because they knew the president's son would refuse to testify; that is, they are trying to score political points, not conducting a good faith investigation.
My advice: Don't hold your breath waiting for the big contempt charge against Hunter.
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But if you're a Republican, don't be too discouraged by that abandonment.
This is politics, not law, and every day that the attention of American voters is focused on the president's son is a bad day for the president.
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