Hunter Biden Charges Could Be Bad News for Donald Trump

The indictment of Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son, on Thursday on nine charges over allegations of tax evasion undermines Donald Trump’s argument that he’s facing a “corrupt” two-tiered system of justice, according to an MSNBC legal analyst.

Lisa Rubin argued Hunter Biden’s second indictment “thoroughly deflates the Trumpian argument that there are two systems of justice and Donald Trump is the one disfavored by it” whilst discussing the case on Chris Hayes’ MSNBC show.

Hunter Biden was charged with three felony counts of tax evasion and filing a false return and six misdemeanor counts of failure to return. The Department of Justice claims he failed to pay at least $1.4 million in federal taxes between 2016 and 2019 and filed a false tax return in 2018. Hunter Biden has since paid back all the money he owed.

If found guilty, the maximum sentence Hunter Biden could face would be 17 years in prison. Appearing on CNN, his attorney, Abbe Lowell, said prosecutors had “piled on nine new charges when he had agreed just months ago to resolve this matter with a pair of misdemeanors.”

During her MSNBC appearance, Rubin suggested if the U.S. has a two-tiered justice system it is unfair to Hunter Biden rather than Trump. Building on an argument she attributed to NBC News correspondent Tom Winter, Rubin said: “To the extent that the Hunter Biden case reflects a two tiered system of justice it’s that it disfavored Hunter Biden.”

She continued: “Even at the stage where we were expecting both a plea agreement and a diversion on the gun charges there were people who thought even that was too harsh so now that he’s subject to not one but two indictments, one in the district of Delaware and now this new tax indictment in California, I think this thoroughly deflates the Trumpian argument that there are two systems of justice and Donald Trump is the one disfavored by it.”

Trump is facing criminal charges in four separate cases over allegations he orchestrated the payment of hush money to a pornographic actress, mishandled classified documents and acted illegally whilst trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election both across the U.S. and in the state of Georgia specifically. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and branded both the FBI and the Justice Department “corrupt.”

Newsweek has contacted Donald Trump for comment via the press enquiry form on his official website.

In an article published on Thursday, Washington Post editor at large and Brookings Institution senior fellow Robert Kagan said claiming the Justice Department is biased against him is a key part of Trump’s defense of character with GOP voters.

He wrote: “This, of course, is also Trump’s legal strategy: to argue that the Biden administration is a dictatorial regime using the justice system to persecute its primary political opponent. In time-honored fashion, Trump is going for the biggest lie.

“His goal is to delegitimize the trials and convince Republican voters that he is the victim of corruption and abuse of the judicial system. He has just begun making that case, but he is going to bang it like a bass drum for the next year.”

In July, a plea deal between Hunter Biden and prosecutors, which would have seen him plead guilty to two misdemeanors for failing to pay taxes in 2017 and 2018 whilst avoiding prosecution for allegedly illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user, collapsed.

Two months later, Hunter Biden was indicted on three charges over allegations he made false statements whilst purchasing a firearm in 2018 whilst a crack cocaine user. In October, he pleaded not guilty to all charges, with Lowell claiming the case was the result of “political pressure” from his father’s opponents.