On the newest episode of The Drill Down, Government Accountability Institute sleuths Peter Schweizer and Eric Eggers compare the DOJ’s lenient treatment of Hunter Biden with the 37 charges against former President and 2024 GOP frontrunner Donald Trump and reach an inescapable conclusion: The ideal of equal justice has been dealt a devastating blow.
“This is further evidence of two standards of justice,” Schweizer says of the Hunter deal, by which the President’s son pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges, for which he’ll draw probation rather than jail time. Hunter Biden will also admit to the felony crime of illegally possessing a gun, but will not plead guilty to that charge; rather, if he stays out of trouble for two years, the gun charge will be dropped.
“They [the Department of Justice] ignored clear violations of law, including FARA violations,” Schweizer says, referring to evidence that Hunter transgressed the Foreign Agent Registration Act in some of his sketchy business dealings abroad. “We have emails that prove [that Hunter and his business associates] knew they were in danger of violating FARA law.”
Eggers notes the DOJ’s apparent rationale for Hunter’s easy treatment was his drug addiction. “It’s too bad Donald Trump spent all that money on lawyers,” Eggers jokes. “What he really needed was a drug dealer.”
Regarding the thirty-seven felony counts that Biden’s DOJ filed against Trump, Schweizer allows that the former President may have a point when he says it seems that he’s been targeted by his chief political rival. Schweizer plays a clip of Biden tipping his hand last year, when he said of Trump, “We just have to demonstrate that he will not take power if he does run, making sure he — under legitimate efforts of our Constitution — does not become the next president again.”
Eggers observes that Trump has been under one cloud or another from the moment in 2015 he came down the escalator and announced his candidacy – Russia-gate, the Ukrainian phone call, the Jan. 6 riots, and now the classified documents. “There’s no shortage of evidence they have been out to get him,” Eggers said.
Schweizer notes that the disparate treatment of political actors according to their party affiliation has ominous implications for our system. “Whether you agree with Trump or not, he’s said ‘We have to drain the swamp!’ He points to the Department of Justice and what happens? He’s indicted on 37 charges…that’s 400 years in jail.”
“It’s enormously frightening,” Schweizer adds, “and it really depends on if you have a ‘D’ or an ‘R’ after your name.”
