Opinion | If Hunter Biden Gets Indicted, There’s an Upside for Joe – By Jack Shafer (Politico) / Oct 8, 2022
Prosecuting the president’s son would be concrete proof of the Justice Department’s non-partisanship.
Nobody with a soul hopes to see their kin convicted of a felony and sent to prison. So it’s an absolute certainty that President Joe Biden isn’t praying for prosecutors to send his son, Hunter Biden, to the slammer for tax and gun-purchase offenses that unnamed federal agents say he should be charged with.
But even if the case against Hunter isn’t as conclusive as the anonymous agents tell the Washington Post it is, then the president should, after shaking off the natural parental gloom, allow himself a moment to celebrate the political gain he stands to reap in the wake of Hunter Biden’s criminal justice misfortune. A Hunter Biden indictment and prosecution would demonstrate the integrity of the Justice Department, which its previous boss, President Donald Trump, politicized and continues to attack.
Before we send the president a celebration bouquet, let’s pause to grant Hunter Biden his innocence until proven guilty. We should also note that anonymous speculation by criminal justice officials to reporters about a suspect’s guilt is completely unfair. It’s bad enough when prosecutors whisper to reporters that someone should be indicted, but in this instance, it was agents who shared their anonymous judgment. Deciding who should be charged is not the agents’ job. Their job is to assemble evidence for prosecutors to determine whether or not to bring charges. Biden’s attorney is justly squawking in the Post over the leak, correctly asserting that it’s a felony for an agent to leak grand jury information and demanding that the leaker or leakers be uncovered and prosecuted. Biden’s attorney will likely widen his beef now that the Wall Street Journal has followed the Post’s story with its own reporting that investigators think Hunter Biden should face prosecution even as prosecutors haven’t come to a final decision.
CONTINUE > https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/10/08/hunter-biden-indicted-fbi-garland-00060992
