Justce Department traditionally offers an unforgiving, hard line on firearms offenses
House is now in a 'foot race' with the Hunter Biden special counsel: John Yoo
Former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo unpacks Special Counsel David Weiss’ indictment of Hunter Biden on three gun charges.
No one can claim surprise that the law is finally catching up to Hunter Biden. I’ve warned before that this could be "one of the biggest political scandals in American history," and we have just witnessed the first time a son of a sitting U.S. president has been criminally indicted.
While this is significant news, mark my words, this is only the beginning of the rest of the story.
Most concerning to me as a former federal prosecutor is watching the Department of Justice (DOJ) muddle through a five-year investigation while staring at such overwhelming evidence of corruption and serious criminal conduct.
Hunter Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland (Drew Angerer/Getty Images | Greg Nash/Pool/AFP/Getty Images)
Contrary to this case, DOJ traditionally offers an unforgiving, hard line on firearms cases, in adherence to Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a national task force created within the DOJ more than 20 years ago to crack down on such cases.
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PSN was adopted by every attorney general, including Merrick Garland, and together many of us are responsible for thousands of Americans serving an average 40 months in federal prison for similar firearms charges.
I personally presented hundreds of firearms cases to grand juries, and there was never a single instance in which I would have been allowed to resolve a case like this without charges. I’ve also reviewed the data of over 189,000 illegal possession of firearms cases and could not find one single offer of diversion from the DOJ.
Hunter Biden’s related tax evasion and prior gun charge sweetheart deal fell apart when DOJ "special counsel" David Weiss attempted to resolve the matter without charges and offered immunity for unrelated charges involving the gun. With due diligence from a federal judge, the deal collapsed.
Weeks later, with egg on his face, Weiss brought three indictments against Hunter Biden with two counts for alleged false statements while purchasing a gun and a third count for possessing the gun while addicted to drugs.
If you haven’t seen the salacious videos and compromising emails from the laptop abandoned by Hunter Biden in a Delaware repair shop five years ago, Hunter can be seen brandishing that gun after giving what appears to be cocaine rocks (visible on camera) to some of his alleged escorts or friends. DOJ has historically charged much more serious crimes with such conduct, many of which would bring potential mandatory minimum sentence of at least five years in federal prison.
The DOJ Is governed by what are called "attorney general policy memos," and many of those memos outline DOJ policy that the highest provable, or most serious, offenses must be charged with sufficient and reasonable evidence.
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No U.S. attorney who has investigated or prosecuted cases like this would say any of the charges being pursued against Hunter constitute the most serious, provable offenses. In truth, these recent charges are the shield protecting the Bidens from true accountability for all crimes there appears to be an overabundance of evidence sufficient to present to a grand jury.
The abandoned laptop, with its incriminating emails, documents, records, texts, pictures and videos, along with the 2020 testimony of Tony Bobulinski, Hunter’s former business associate, and the jarring evidence coming out of House Oversight and Judiciary committee investigations, reveal an elaborate scheme and effort to cover up such scheme to pull millions from foreign entities for access and the promise of favors from the "Big Guy."
The crime is not complex but the subterfuge needed to hide and evade investigation involves many people, creation of multiple fake companies, namely 16 LLCs, and cooperation of co-conspirators. All of this is more than enough to justify search warrants and presentation to the grand jury for criminal indictments against Hunter and any other Biden family members involved. I would have issued such warrants and presented such evidence to the grand jury.
The web may seem complex, but the crimes are simple – even if they’re massive in scale. Hence the Bidens’ and the DOJ’s need for subterfuge through deceit, evasion and distraction to avoid true accountability for serious criminal conduct. Like any white-collar investigation, scrutinizing the entire Biden family finances should have been at the heart of what the Delaware U.S. attorney’s office investigated for five years.
Hunter and Joe Biden should be facing the same level of scrutiny that others with such evidence of corruption have always faced. Instead, they are comfortable and confident with a false sense of security that they will never be fully investigated and probably never face a day in prison.
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Brett Tolman is executive director for Right on Crime and former United States attorney for the District of Utah. Tolman was a leading figure in the drafting and passage of the First Step Act, one of the most sweeping reforms of the federal criminal justice system in decades.
