The overlapping legal woes of former President Trump and Hunter Biden have often been juxtaposed as evidence of a “two-tiered justice system” keen on taking down Republicans and shielding Democrats from criminal prosecution.
Trump’s 34 felony convictions in Manhattan two weeks ago bolstered that GOP-led rhetoric — proof that the scales of justice were tipped against them.
But when President Biden’s son was convicted by a Delaware jury Tuesday of three federal gun crimes, those same provocateurs weren’t impressed.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) dubbed Hunter Biden “the Deep State’s sacrificial lamb,” while Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) called the conviction “kinda dumb tbh.” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) called Trump’s legal woes “an entirely different situation.” And Trump himself claimed the trial was a “distraction” from the Biden family’s “real crimes.”
The two historic convictions, issued by juries just weeks apart, have yielded two stark narratives — one that derides the American justice system as rigged and another that insists it isn’t, despite ongoing efforts to undermine it.
“We’ve never seen anything like this — in short order, the prosecution of an ex-president and conviction of an ex-president, followed by the conviction of the only remaining [son] of a sitting president, where there is this backdrop of widespread distrust of the legal system,” said William Howell, a politics professor at the University of Chicago.
“We’ve obviously had other moments in presidential history where stark choices have been put before the public, but the character of this choice is all kinds of new,” he said.
Republicans’ claims of lawfare, or the use of legal systems against them, have been mounting for nearly a decade. As the Justice Department investigated Trump’s 2016 campaign ties to Russia during more than half of his presidency, he decried the probe as a “witch hunt” hundreds of times — the term now a mainstay in his messaging.
Trump’s claims of unfair treatment under the law surged when he came under scrutiny by federal and state officials, which ultimately led to four criminal indictments and a slew of civil matters after he left office. He met his first criminal indictment last year — the Manhattan hush money case in which he was ultimately convicted — with rage, describing the charges as “an insult to our country.”
“The only crime that I have committed is to fearlessly defend our nation from those who seek to destroy it,” Trump said April 4, 2023, after his arraignment.
Hunter Biden’s own legal troubles began around the same time as Trump’s. The president’s son announced in December 2020 that he was under investigation by the Justice Department, though unnamed sources confirmed to several outlets that the probe began in 2018.
Last year, Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed David Weiss — the Trump-appointed U.S. attorney for the District of Delaware who had been spearheading the Hunter Biden probe — as a special counsel to continue his work with broader discretion. Weiss was one of the only attorneys general appointed by Trump that Biden, when he took office, kept in place, due to the investigation into his son.
Two sets of federal charges, from Weiss’s gun probe and tax probe, were filed against Hunter Biden last year, just months apart. After a failed plea deal and the subsequent trial, he was convicted Tuesday in the first of those cases, which accused him of lying about his use of illicit drugs when purchasing a gun in 2018 and unlawfully obtaining it for 11 days after. The second case, regarding alleged tax law violations, could go to trial in September — right in the heat of the general election.
“If the argument was that there’s two tiers of justice, then the Biden case — meaning Hunter Biden’s case — would never have been gone to trial,” said Michael Weinstein, a former federal prosecutor. “The plea deal would have went through, the case would have been swallowed up in some motion practice or some technicality. But because it went to trial and because ultimately he was found guilty, the argument that there’s two tiers of justice kind of falls by the wayside.
“It’s like throwing sand in the air at the beach,” he added. “It just dissolves.”
The messages Trump and Hunter Biden, as well as his father, espoused after their respective convictions sharply diverged.
In his first remarks following his three-count conviction, Hunter Biden thanked his family for its “love and support” and highlighted his journey with addiction, which played a central role in the trial.
“Recovery is possible by the grace of God, and I am blessed to experience that gift one day at a time,” he said.
President Biden said he would accept the outcome of the case and “continue to respect the judicial process” as his son considers an appeal, building off an earlier promise not to pardon his son if convicted.
Trump, however, turned toward retribution. The former president told various media outlets it was “very possible” Democrats could face prosecution down the road, that he had “every right to go after them” given his own prosecution and that “sometimes revenge can be justified.”
His allies made similar remarks. Less than an hour after the verdict, Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) issued a call to arms: “Time for Red State AGs and DAs to get busy.”
“I think the political rhetoric is undermining the rule of law to some degree, as well as the credibility of the courts, both the trial courts, the appellate courts and the Supreme Court. And I tie that back to the political campaigns and the politicians who are doing that more than anything else,” Weinstein said.
Garland warned in a Washington Post opinion piece Tuesday — published in advance of a House vote to hold the agency head in contempt and before any verdict in Hunter Biden’s case had been decided — that escalating political attacks against the Justice Department have made “heinous threats of violence” toward the department commonplace.
“Continued unfounded attacks against the Justice Department’s employees are dangerous for people’s safety. They are dangerous for our democracy. This must stop,” Garland wrote.
Howell said efforts to sow anger and distrust at “every turn” would have “real consequences,” only one of which could be a rise in political violence.
“It encourages people to run to their corners and crouch and treat their political opponents as ‘others’ that need to be managed and distanced,” he said. “And those are real consequences for our country.”
Despite the two trials’ proximity and politically contentious nature, the justice system is so far “holding firm,” Weinstein said.
“I’m not sure it’s a two-sided justice system,” he said. “It seems like the justice system, as archaic and difficult and as problematic as it may be, is actually working.”