Both sides is like a religion

This is Joseph.

I had mistaken Mark liking Ken White for liking Josh Barro (easy to do, they both do the same podcast). After some mild editorial correction, I think we agree on his latest substack article struck as being a very odd way of thinking. 

When Hunter’s plea deal first came out, Ken White and I discussed it on Serious Trouble, and Ken’s take was that the deal was pretty lenient for Hunter. While not out of the realm of possible plea agreements for a similar alleged offense, Ken said that a misdemeanor plea for failing to pay the amount of taxes at issue in Hunter’s case would normally result in a recommendation for several months in jail, rather than the probationary sentence the government recommended.

Regardless of why prosecutors were initially willing to make this deal — and keeping in mind the possibility that they were willing because the deal was never intended to be as sweet as it looked, because prosecutors intended to reserve the right to prosecute Hunter for other crimes like violating the Foreign Agents’ Registration Act — I think it would be good for the country to see a child of the president go on trial for evading taxes. At a time when a former president is multiply indicted and his company has already been convicted of tax crimes, such a trial would serve as a useful reminder that nobody in either party is above facing the law, and that even the president’s son can go to prison.

So there are two sets of charges.  One, is a gun charge based on a law that has just been ruled unconstitutional by the 5th circuit of appeals. Now, perhaps this will be reversed, but recent Supreme court precedent does not makes this the strongest of charges. The tax charges are rarely charged and failing to pay taxes due to financial issues is hardly a major crime. The plea agreement looks good if you include the firearms charge but pretty reasonable if you include two tax misdemeanors, where proving intent is likely to be hard. 

Now, proving intent was hard with Former President Trump looked hard too, bit recent discoveries of evidence like calling Pence "too honest" and bragging the he could have declassified information but did not really change the narrative here. I will still be surprised by a conviction in the documents case, or any conviction at all, really, but I see how one might meet this burden here. Perhaps they have similar statements from Hunter Biden. 

But these seem like very different issues. In one case, the addict relative of a prominent person gets a special prosecutor for what looks like tax misdemeanors. In the other, it is the former politician themselves with so many charges it is hard to keep them all straight. It isn't like this is Joe Biden, Obama, Clinton, or Pelosi -- no member of the Democratic leadership is involved. 

Besides, it is not a case where optics should be the issue. The issue is whether justice is being served and it seems like the opposite of fair given the speed and intensity of the charging decisions versus the  gravity of the crimes. 

That said, I do think a trial makes the most sense here. The charges have a lot of uphill battle associated with them and the ambiguity seems clear cut for a trial to resolve. But the special prosecutor piece is just strange. How many special prosecutors do you think are appointed for minor tax crimes? 

In this case I agree with Elie Mystal that this was perhaps not the optimal approach and that maybe this is a lot of high profile government resources for very minor crimes. Mark added this helpful point of context as well, which really does bring out the absurdity of it all: